Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for ‘s power to thunder.

Coriolanus, by most reckonings Shakespeare’s last tragedy, is probably also his least known (Only Timon of Athens or Cymbeline could really contest it for obscurity, I think), but since there’s a new film adaption that’s been getting rave reviews, it seemed like a good time to give it a shot.

Coriolanus is a warrior, but not just any warrior. He’s more like a Shakespearean Superman, completely fearless and virtually indestructible. However, unlike Othello, maybe his closest analog, he isn’t beloved. He’s arrogant and has little regard for the opinions of those he considers beneath him, which is almost everyone, excluding his mother, Voluminia, his wife, Virgilia, and his mentor, Menenius, . Having returned from a battle with the Volsces, led by his chief rival, Tullus Arfidius, in which he more-or-less singlehandedly won the day, Coriolanus is honored by the senate, but, through the scheming of certain senators, the people are turned against him, and his day of victory becomes one of sorrow, as he is exiled from Rome. He allies himself with Arfidius, his former enemy, to destroy Rome, but, at the last minute, is convinced by his mother to broker a peace instead. Of course, this being a tragedy, he is betrayed and killed in the final pages of the play.

Coriolanus is a little different from the typical Shakespearean lead because we’re not given much of a glimpse into his psyche. There are no real soliloquies, no soul-searching, for him. He’s a man’s man, a warrior who values battle and valor for their own sake and always speaks his mind. He’s not a very sympathetic protagonist in a lot of ways, but the conspiracies that slowly destroy his life turn him into an antihero for the people—a term the patrician Coriolanus would probably detest—in the sense that, who hasn’t felt like they were under-appreciated despite clearly being the best at what they do?

There’s an interesting fascist undertone to the play as well. Coriolanus is openly contemptuous of the common folk, disparaging them for wanting to influence the workings of empire, and, while the play never explicitly states that he is correct, his tragic heroism gives his statist leanings a sheen of idealism, something for Shakespeare scholars to fight over for a while, when they get tired of arguing about sexism in Taming of the Shrew.

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

Why, there they are both, baked in that pie;
Whereof their mother daintily hath fed,
Eating the flesh that she herself hath bred.
'Tis true, 'tis true; witness my knife's sharp point.

So, apparently Titus Andronicus is pretty much universally considered Shakespeare’s worst play. Even Harold Bloom, Bard booster extraordinaire, says the play can’t be taken seriously, and must be read as satire if anything at all is to be gotten from it at all; other critics attack its extreme—sometimes comically so—violence; still others point to the less than nuanced characters, none of which are really worth cheering for, as the play’s biggest weakness. And, I have to admit, on one level, it’s hard to disagree. Apart from Aaron, who’s certainly one of the most despicable villains in all of Shakespeare, most of the players are notable mainly for the gruesome ways in which they die. There are no “Alas, poor Yorick” moments, the poetry is spare, and the genuine emotion is thin—I felt revulsion more strongly than anything else while reading Titus Andronicus.

So, the story: Titus is returning from battle, bearing with him Tamora, Queen of the Goths and her sons, one of which he commands to be mutilated, in spite of Tamora’s pleas for mercy. This act of butchery sets off the whole play, most of which is taken up with Tamora’s revenge, which she plans with Aaron, her Moorish lover, and Titus’s response. You know the drill; it’s a Shakespearean tragedy—everyone dies, pretty much.

The thing is, while the criticisms of Titus Andronicus are basically true, they don’t make it a bad play. For Shakespeare, the man who gave us Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and scads of literature’s most famous characters, it’s definitely lower-tier. As an entertainment, though, it’s not bad. It’s grotesquely funny, fast-moving, and, as mentioned, Aaron is basically evil personified. It’s not going to change your life, but it’ll probably pass an afternoon, and, at the end (SPOILER) a mother’s sons are served to her in pies. Shakespeare knows pulp.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased."

Waiting for Godot is a short little play by Samuel Beckett that’s often considered one of the most important plays ever written. Representing a near-complete break from the necessities of plot and coherency, its plotless plot—two men, Estragon and Vladimir, wait in front of a weeping willow for the never-to-show Godot, and interact only with a madman, Pozzo, and his mostly-mute slave, Lucky, and then start the whole process over again the next day—brought the absurd and unknowable to the mass audience of the theater.

Reading the play—I have a performance downloaded which I haven’t yet watched—I was struck by how involving it is. In spite of the nothing that happens (twice!), it still kept me wondering what wouldn(n’t) happen next. Never having read the play, I wasn’t sure if Godot would show, but after the first act, it became pretty evident that he wouldn’t be making an appearance in the second.

Because of Godot’s complete refusal to show its hand, it can be interpreted in any number of ways. Partially due to my own interests and partially due to the text itself, I found it most effectively read as a modern lament of the absence of God. Godot, inexplicable and unseen, never shows, never really explains, and only sends a young boy to tell the two men, at the close of every day, that he’ll come tomorrow which, of course, he never does. This smacks of deism, but there’s a strong strain of humanism in the play as well, in spite of its dim trappings. Beckett himself said it was only about symbiosis, and that symbiosis is evident in the exchanges between Vladimir and Estragon: they can hardly stand each other at times, but they certainly can’t make it alone.

It’s also worth noting that the play is pretty funny, in an absurd way, and if that’s your thing, you can enjoy it on that level as well. It seems like a work that would reward rereading; perhaps I’ll read it again next time I’m at the DMV.

The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

Exit, pursued by a bear.

While The Winter's Tale hardly does justice to the brilliance of Shakespeare, it still bears the distinction of its playwright. I confess, I am more a fan of the tragedies with their seemingly endless profundities than the comedies which, in their lightheartedness, struck me as being shallow. This particular play combines some of both worlds, with unfortunate events leading to joyful circumstances, all spiced with the usual madcap whirl of disguises, mix-ups, ravishing beauties, lovelorn (and rather silly) boys, whimsical songs, and sadly-the-wiser men.

(Begin spoiling here...)
The plot recalled to mind Sophocles' Oedipus the King, beginning as it does with the tragic blindness and (rather like Chesterton's purely rational madman) small-minded logic of King Leontes of Sicilia. He accuses his pregnant wife Hermione of adultery, the other party being his dear friend King Polixenes of Bohemia. In his rage, he cannot bear even to look at the child when it is born, and condemns it to the Oedipal fate of being cast out in the wilderness to whatever terrors or delights the gods might have for it. Baby Perdita ends up with shepherds (again...), King Leontes' heir dies, and Hermione basically turns into a statue. The oracle at Delphi says Leontes can't expect an heir unless he reclaims his daughter, who has been completely lost. There you have the tragedy.

Comedy turned out to be shades of The Tempest, with lots of disgustingly sweet love language exchanged between Polixenes' son, Florizel (whose name predisposes him to his speech; "flor-" is the Latin root for "flower"), and the shepherdess maiden, Perdita. Of course they're crossed in their love because that makes the plot more interesting, and from that, drama ensues, leading to happily ever after for practically everyone. Not Antigonus though. He got eaten by a bear. But that eventually freed dearest Paulina to marry Camillo, so all's well that ends well.

This play was an interesting stretch for me because I have only ever read one other Shakespeare play without the handy definitions page opposite, but the more I read, the more understandable his English becomes. That's neither here nor there, although I do recommend trying it at least once for the sake of the experience.

In terms of Shakespeare, it's not the first play I would recommend to anyone who hasn't read any of his work. In fact, it's rather far down the list. That being said, it is still miles ahead of the work of most playwrights, so in relative terms, it still ends up near the top. And there's always the satisfaction of knowing that you've read one of his more obscure works, so you can impress people that you meet at dinner parties. If you're the sort of person who goes to those sorts of events and wants to impress that sort of people, of course.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning.

So, four years into 50 Books, I’ve finally read my first Shakespeare. I can’t say, not having read anything else by the bard, whether King Lear was a good or bad choice. It seems like a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I was unfamiliar with the story, so there was some suspense that wouldn’t have been present had I chosen, say, Romeo and Juliet. On the other hand, King Lear may be Shakespeare’s most complex play, and, reading it mostly without commentary like I did, I’m sure I missed a lot.

But the real question is, is it good? And I am thankful to validate Shakespeare scholars everywhere when I say, yes, it is. King Lear is a seriously dense play, full of double crosses, emotional subtleties, eye gouging, and swordfighting. The basic gist is this: One day, King Lear, old and ready to pass on his power, gathers his three daughters, Gonreil, Regan, and Cordelia. He asks each of them how much they love him, and while Gonreil and Regan answer with flattering hyperbole, Cordelia attempts to give an honest answer, and, for her troubles, is banished. The remaining daughters set in motion a fairly complex plot, most of it out of their control, which ends with almost the entire cast dead, including King Lear himself, who first has a short period of being completely bonkers. And yes, these are spoilers, but Lear is a tragedy, after all.

I don’t feel competent to really dissect Lear, but here are a few observations. King Lear himself is a pitiful character, overthrown by his own pride but unable to see it. It’s ironic that he makes almost as much sense crazy as he does sane, having the gall to claim himself wronged after banishing his truest daughter for the unforgivable sin of honesty.Not that the moral/sane characters get off much better. Many of them receive their unearned comeuppance. In spite of Albany’s late declaration that divine justice has been served, it’s difficult to see any justice or order at all by the end of King Lear. In that way, the play functions as a critique of divine intervention, and takes no sides. Good does prevail in the end, but at what cost? Is justice gained through injustice just at all? In the same vein, it’s interesting that Shakespeare chose to set Lear in a pre-Christian world. It allows him to ask difficult questions that nevertheless require some transposition to consider in a Christian context.

Although Lear is hundreds of years old, it’s likely to always be resonant. Leaders don’t change much, and neither do men. Kings will always be brought low by pride, the good will always die at the hands of the wicked, and the question will always remain, can it really be any different?

Chris's Review