Poets and their visions 38: Shakespeare 8 – Strange Romances

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All’s Well that ends Well, Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

In addition to what they suffer through jealousy, women in Shakespeare have also to cope with many other problems. The most peculiar perhaps is that of Helena in All’s Well that ends Well, who is desperately in love with Bertram, the son of the Countess of Roussilon, the patron of her father. She expresses this with astonishingly forthright passion, in the very first scene –

            my imagination
Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. ‘Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. ‘Twas pretty, though plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart’s table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:
But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques.

At the end of the scene she expresses her determination to get her man

our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.

And in the end she succeeds. First she marries Bertram after she cures the King of France, who promises her that she can choose any husband she wants. Then, after he has abandoned her, she follows him to the wars and changes places with a girl he had tried to seduce. Since Bertram had promised to accept her as his wife if she obtains from him his family ring and gets pregnant by him, she is able to get him to accept her in the last scene of the play. But the cynicism with which he has talked about the girl he thought he had slept with suggests a less than happy ending for Helena

            certain it is I liked her,
And boarded her i’ the wanton way of youth:
She knew her distance and did angle for me,
Madding my eagerness with her restraint,
As all impediments in fancy’s course
Are motives of more fancy; and, in fine,
Her infinite cunning, with her modern grace,
Subdued me to her rate: she got the ring;
And I had that which any inferior might
At market-price have bought.

Much Ado about Nothing also involves gross humiliation of a woman, when Claudio abandons Hero on their wedding day. He has been tricked into believing her to have been unfaithful, and he is soon disabused and marries her, but again the impression the play leaves is that women in love are at the mercy of their loved one’s whims. Conversely, the idea that men can freely stray is set by an early song –

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore,

To one thing constant never.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny

Acts of Faith – Chapter 2; Pt 2 – Action Stations

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Acts of Faith, Black July

Indra and Diana were trapped—if that is the right word for what could well be described as the safest and most peaceful spot in the country—in a wild life reserve during the troubles. They had been on one of their regular visits to Phyllis who, though she adored her massive house and her little village, grew quite bored with it at times and whenever she could bundled any house guests available into her land rover to make an Expedition. These were often to the sanctuaries, but as often as not they were simpler meanderings towards and not towards some distant and not very vital goal, designed primarily for the enjoyment of the countryside, and the birds and the trees and the flowers. At the back of the vehicle, amidst pots and pans and provisions, were two village belles (usually chosen by lot since demand for places on these trips was intense) to do any wayside cooking and serving required, and either with them or on the roof-rack, depending upon the claims of modesty and their ages and his, was a boy of all work to set up deckchairs and build fires and do any other odd jobs necessary. Though Phyllis could do without a great many things, there were certain comforts she thought basic; and, even if Diana occasionally worried about the almost feudal character of these expeditions, to Indra they were blissful.

The troubles rocking the rest of the country indeed scarcely impinged upon them in their rural retreat, hearing about them as they did only from isolated trackers met on the paths or fitfully over the carefully censored and furiously crackling radio. They did however have a cause for worry in that the boy they had brought with them was Tamil. This was largely Indra’s responsibility and, if ever Diana came near to criticizing Indra’s initiatives, it was on this occasion.

Krishna was the son of Phyllis’ ancient gardener and had grown up within the grounds of the House; but a few months before he had gone off for ever along with his older sister and her husband to the new colonies that were being established in Vavuniya, in the bare and derelict lands between the Tamil north and the Sinhalese to the south. He had however found the life there dull and the work heavy, and had complained bitterly to Phyllis in several letters. His father nevertheless said firmly that the boy ought to settle down to being a landed proprietor, on however small a scale, and though Phyllis had been told that his views were governed by the fact that he had been given quite a large sum of money when the boy was taken away by the people setting up the colony, she felt that she ought not to interfere. But Indra had been very determined on hearing of the situation during his last visit, and had even suggested a trip to the area so that the boy could be rescued. So here he was with them now, deep down in the farthest south of the island, with many miles to travel through hostile country before they reached refuge in the Village; and, though he could speak Sinhalese, his accent was bound to give him away, if he were subjected to any rigorous and aggressive test.

About Krishna, as it turned out, they need not have worried. Their driver had a profound distaste for Tamils in general, but also a tremendous loyalty to Phyllis’ whole household, so he was convinced that Krishna did not really count; he swore violently accordingly at anyone who tried to stop them en route to see if there were any Tamils in the vehicle, and he carried such conviction that they got through unscathed. This was in spite of the fact that the day on which they set out, thinking that things had now calmed down, was that on which the troubles spread to the hills and erupted in the towns through which they had to pass.