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During Shakespeare’s time, marriage was a male-dominated institution. A wife’s legal rights were essentially nil, a husband had every social advantage, and thus a woman’s status and happiness were based on her husband’s behavior. The cruelty of this plight is articulated by Antipholus’s wife, Adriana, in The Comedy of Errors
During Shakespeare’s time, marriage was a male-dominated institution. A wife’s legal rights were essentially nil, a husband had every social advantage, and thus a woman’s status and happiness were based on her husband’s behavior. The cruelty of this plight is articulated by Antipholus’s wife, Adriana, in The Comedy of Errors:His company must do his minions grace, Whilst I at home starve for a merry look: Hath homely age th’ alluring beauty took From my poor cheek? Then he hath wasted it. Are my discourses dull? Barren my wit? If voluble and sharp discourse be marr’d, Unkindness blunts it more than marble hard. (II, i, 87–93) This excerpt reflects diverse emotions. Adriana communicates possessiveness, but she also needs to be loved. She fears that her husband has lost interest in her, but she knows that she still has much to offer him. She does not seek to rule her roving spouse, but she does desire his time, attention, and love. She feels bitter at his ill treatment, but is eager for his pleasure with her to be revived. Most important, Shakespeare makes us feel sympathy for Adriana’s predicament—indeed, for the predicament of all wives. Although Adriana’s complicated expression of frustration appears in one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, the issues it raises may be found in many of Shakespeare’s plays, in which the portrait of marriage is more complex. Two general themes emerge: (1) women characters are often forced to accept men who are far less worthy they are; and (2) the most admirable couples are joined in a subtle balance of responsibility, affection, and authority. To find situations in which a woman must settle for an undeserving husband, we might look at any of several plays. In some cases, we see the couple only during courtship; nonetheless, reasonable judgments can be drawn from the evidence. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for instance, neither of Hermia’s suitors, Lysander and Demetrius, appears worthy of either her or her friend Helena. At the beginning of the play, Hermia’s father, Egeus, derogates his daughter’s love for Lysander (I, i, 22–45). Meanwhile, the young man stands silent, then pleads for Hermia’s hand not by praising her, but by claiming that he, Lysander, is just as deserving as Demetrius, who insists on pursuing Hermia despite her intense dislike of him (I, i, 99–110). When Hermia and Lysander are left alone, he lays out his plan to escape into the woods with her, but soon reveals the scheme to Helena, with whom he seems to have had a dalliance in that same locale (I, i, 165–168). Moreover, the play is filled with references to male infidelity, such as Hermia’s lines: By all the vows that ever men have broke (In number more than ever women spoke)… (I, i, 175–176) Although many of the men’s rudest words and actions occur when the two fall under the spell of the fairy king, Oberon, and his sprite Puck’s magic juices, Lysander and Demetrius also alter their depth of emotion, as when a bewitched Lysander denounces Hermia, whom he formerly loved, with more passion than he ever musters to exalt her: Get you gone, you dwarf, You minimus, of hind’ring knot-grass made; You bead, you acorn. (III, ii, 328–330) Finally, when Bottom and the other mechanicals (or laborers) perform their hilarious version of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” it is Demetrius, still under the influence of Oberon’s potion, who sneers at the drama. His attitude is contrasted by that of Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta, who understand the implications of this story of tragic love, however badly it is performed. At the sight of Bottom as Pyramus, mourning over what he assumes is the body of his dead lover, Theseus comments: “This passion, and the death of a dear friend, would go near to make a man look sad” (V, i, 288–289), while Hippolyta adds “Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man” (V, i, 290). We see comparatively little of this noble marriage, but even in a few lines like these, Theseus and Hippolyta reveal that they share fundamental values which suggest that their mar riage has a strong foundation. We also see in them an equilibrium, a mutual respect that dignifies both husband and wife. We doubt that Lysander and Hermia, or Demetrius and Helena, will achieve such parity. The contrast between the attitudes of men and women in courtship buttresses much of Love’s Labor’s Lost. For instance, the Princess of France, who knows of the King of Navarre’s vow against the presence of women in his court, shows herself to be worldly about human nature and love: Beauty is bought by the judgment of the eye, Not uttr’d by the base sale of chapmen’s tongues. (II, i, 15–16) To no one’s surprise, therefore, the King and his lords who seek to deny themselves love become infatuated with the Princess and her ladies. Eventually the men discover one another’s foibles, and the jollity is infectious, as even the King of Navarre recognizes the truth: “But what of this, are we not all in love?” (IV, iii, 278). The women, however, remain frustrated, as Rosaline, one of the Princess’s attendants, explains that she wishes she could make Lord Berowne, who for so long has scorned commitment, suffer for the games he plays and the foolish gifts and poetry he offers her: How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, And shape his service wholly to my device, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! (V, ii, 62–66) She feels frustrated by a woman’s socially determined role in the rituals of courtship and marriage. She is also impatient with the casual relationships the men have maintained, for she seeks genuine affection. Later, as the Pageant of the Nine Worthies unfolds, the males in the onstage audience prove their shallowness by heckling the participants mercilessly. For example, when the clown Costard introduces himself (“I Pompey am—” [V, ii, 547]), Berowne nastily, and not particularly wittily, interrupts: “You lie, you are not he” (V, ii, 548). Earlier, the men endured humiliation by dressing as Muscovites and dancing with the women, who all along recognized them and mockingly flirted with them. Now Berowne derives perverse satisfaction by transferring that humiliation to the helpless actors. Yet Boyet, who has been Berowne’s antagonist, finds such childishness attractive (V, ii, 549). The implication is that the men, as ever hollow, bond only by attacking others, while the women are moved by the efforts of the players. The merriment of the performance is interrupted by a rare tragic moment in Shakespearean comedy: the announcement of the death of the Princess’s father. The shock forces all to contemplate the uselessness of so much of what has occurred. Berowne offers words of conciliation (V, ii, 755–758), but the Princess and the other ladies demand more than apologies. Therefore the men are assigned to complete various trials for a year, after which time the women will consider capitulating in marriage. One consequence of this punishment is that the men will not simply be awarded the women, but must prove themselves worthy. We are left to decide whether such men will ever be capable of doing so. Other couples that seem less than ideal pairings include the lost Viola and Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. At the beginning of the play, he wallows in decadence: If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. (I, i, 1–3) He thereafter disparages all women’s love as inconstant: Alas, their love may be call’d appetite, No motion of the liver, but the palate, That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt, But mine is all as hungry as the sea, And can digest as much. (II, iv, 97–101) Ironically, Orsino is the one whose affections alternate between Countess Olivia and the disguised Viola. Thus at the end of the play, when he proposes marriage to Viola, the gesture is less than convincing, and we fully expect his eye to continue wandering. In Henry VI, Part 1, Shakespeare presents a marriage that is hopeless from the start: the union between Henry VI, King of England, and Margaret, daughter to the King of Naples, which is arranged by Lord Suffolk, whose attraction to Margaret dooms the weak Henry. As Suffolk says: I’ll undertake to make thee Henry’s queen, To put a golden sceptre in thy hand, And set a precious crown upon thy head, If thou wilt condescend to be my— (V, iii, 117–120) At this stipulation, Margaret retorts sharply “What?” (V, iii, 120), but Suffolk gracefully sidesteps: “His love” (V, iii, 121). We have no doubt, however, that both parties understand and accept his implication. The travesty becomes more apparent when Suffolk persuades Henry to ignore the marriage arranged by the trustworthy Protector, Lord Gloucester: For what is wedlock forced, but a hell, An age of discord and continial strife? Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss, And is a pattern of celestial peace. (V, v, 62–65) Suffolk’s motives are malevolent, but he also reminds us that for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a royal marriage had social, political, and religious implications. In other plays, Shakespeare suggests that the same can be said of marriages between less exalted personages. Throughout Henry VI, Part 2 and Part 3, however, the focus is on the universal destruction that can be caused by a king and queen who are ill-suited, and in this series of plays Margaret runs roughshod over her husband. One example occurs in Part 2, when she explodes at Gloucester and the other rivals who hope to use her domination of Henry for their own advancement: Beside the haughty Protector, have we Beauford The imperious churchman, Somerset, Buckingham, And grumbling York; and not the least of these But can do more in England than the King. (I, iii, 68–71) Not long after, while everyone is aware of the ongoing struggle for the crown between the rival families, Henry VI offers his perspective: For my part, noble lords, I care not which, Or Somerset or York, all’s one to me. (I, iii, 101–102) The King’s political vulnerability reflects his weakness as a husband and as a man. Even when a nobleman is strong enough to try to stand up to a powerful wife, results can be calamitous. Macbeth is certainly not timid, as his success in battle suggests, and the witches’ prediction that he will one day hold the throne inspires him to contemplate murder (I, iii, 130–142). Nonetheless, it is Lady Macbeth’s urging that drives a reluctant Macbeth to act. In a curious way, Macbeth admires her will: Bring forth men-children only! For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males. (I, vii, 72–74) Moreover, and perhaps strange to say, he loves her deeply. When later she asks to know his plans, Macbeth tries to shield her from the worst of his schemes: “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,/ Till thou applaud the deed” (III, ii, 45–46). When he learns that she is in such torment over her crimes that she has been sleepwalking, he offers helpless sympathy: If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again. (V, iii, 50–54) Yet his affection for his wife does not enable him to stand up to her misdirected efforts for his advancement. Not all wives in Shakespeare’s plays who challenge their husbands are presented as dangerous. To the contrary, they are often figures of conscience. In Julius Caesar, Brutus’s wife, Portia, visits him after the company of conspirators departs. She recognizes that he is beset by conflicts, and asks the cause: You have some sick offense within your mind, Which, by the right and virtue of my place, I ought to know of… (II, iii, 268–270) After he refuses to confide in her, she states her case more authoritatively: I grant I am a woman; but withal A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife. I grant that I am a woman; but withal A woman well reputed, Cato’s daughter. Think you I am no stronger than my sex, Being so father’d and husbanded? (II, i, 292–297) Her passion touches Brutus: “O ye gods!/ Render me worthy of this noble wife!” (II, i, 297–298). He knows that the scheme he has planned with the other conspirators is morally indefensible. Thus his avoidance of his wife’s questions and his unwillingness to respect her as a partner reflect his shame, as well as his dishonesty in refusing to acknowledge his wrongdoing. The same sort of male denial is apparent in the relationship between the Trojan hero Hector and his wife, Andromache, in Troilus and Cressida. Here is a play filled with distorted affections and values, but amid the chaos, the marriage of the son of the Trojan King Priam occasionally seems like an oasis of sanity. When, however, the challenge from the Greek hero Achilles finally is brought forth, Hector cannot resist, despite Andromache’s warning: When was my lord so much ungently temper’d To stop his ears against admonishment? Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day. (V, iii, 1–3) Hector responds with the timeless tactic of bullying. Rather than answer directly, he questions his wife’s right to ask him anything at all: You train me to offend you, get you in. By the everlasting gods, I’ll go! (V, iii, 4–5) Once again, we encounter a husband whose unwillingness to treat his wife as an equal reflects his own weakness. One more example of such behavior may be found in Henry IV, Part 1, in which Hotspur, who has been tossing sleeplessly in bed, belittles his wife’s questions about the cause of such restlessness. He has been conspiring with his father, Northumberland, and his uncle, Worcester, to remove Henry IV from the throne, and Hotspur has never publically expressed doubts about the legitimacy of their cause. But the more firmly he refuses to answer his wife’s queries, the more we sense his unspoken guilt: I must not have you henceforth question me Whither I go, nor reason whereabout. Whither I must, I must, and to conclude, This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate. (II, iii, 103–106) A few lines later he adds: “Thou wilt not utter what thou does not know…” (II, iii, 111), but his attempt at pretending to protect her does not mask his awareness that the enterprise he intends to carry out is, at its core, illegal. Perhaps the most puzzling marriage in all of Shakespeare’s plays is between King Claudius and Queen Gertrude in Hamlet. Hamlet continually implies that Claudius is far inferior to Hamlet’s late father, whom Claudius murdered, but we never see Claudius treat Gertrude with anything but kindness. Indeed, Claudius claims to his advisor Laertes, Polonius’s son, that he tolerates Hamlet’s violent behavior solely because of Gertrude’s affections for her son (IV, vii, 11–12). Then Claudius adds: …and for myself— My virtue or my plague, be it either which— She is so [conjunctive] to my life and soul, That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her. (IV, vii, 12–16) Claudius is ever the politician, but these words seem genuine, and nothing in the play contradicts them. As for Gertrude, questions abound. Were she and Claudius lovers before Claudius killed her husband? Does she suspect that Claudius committed the crime? Does she know for certain that he did so? Was she an accomplice? At one point during her confrontation with Hamlet, the only scene where the two are alone, Gertrude verges on confession: O Hamlet, speak no more! Thou turn’st my [eyes into my very] soul, And there I see such black and [grained] spots As will [not] leave their tinct. (III, iv, 88–91) But seconds later the Ghost orders Hamlet to desist from questioning Gertrude further, and the mystery remains unsolved. Does the Ghost fear learning the truth about her affections? Again, we do not know. On the surface, therefore, this marriage appears to be based on love, but like so much else in Hamlet, it remains an enigma. What we see among the noble marriages, therefore, is a series of relationships that are out of balance, in which one partner or both fail to live up to their responsibilities. Sometimes the husband conforms to his wife’s suggestions, sometimes not. On the other hand, among the marriages portrayed between non-nobles, the husband generally proves unfaithful or shallow. Can we, then, point to any other partnerships in Shakespeare’s plays that we might deem healthy, where mutual respect does exist? One would be in Much Ado About Nothing, in which the perpetually squabbling protagonists Beatrice and Benedick, having been tricked by their friends into believing that each is in love with the other, allow their true feelings to surface. We enjoy watching the deception, but even more intriguing is the reaction of the love-stricken pair when they realize that they have been duped. After Benedick muses: “They swore that you were almost sick for me” (V, iv, 80), Beatrice answers in a similar pattern: “They swore that you were well-nigh dead for me” (V, iv, 81). As they banter back and forth, each unwilling to confess passion, their playfulness is utterly winning, and as they dance together, literally holding each other in shared melody and rhythm, we feel that here are a man and woman allying themselves forever. We feel the same way about one other couple, equally unlikely to be matched, but even more notorious for the volatility of their passions. Therefore to judge them happy may seem outlandish. After all, in The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio forces his new wife Katherine to surrender to him by denying her food and sleep. But when she does give in, their sport has considerable charm, as when they encounter an old man on the road back to Padua. Katherine has previously conformed to Petruchio’s claims about whether the sun or the moon shines on them. Now she glances at the ancient traveler, whom Petruchio has deemed a “gentlewoman” (IV, v, 29), and comments cheerfully: Young budding virgin, fair, and fresh, and sweet, Whither away, or [where] is thy abode? Happy the parents of so fair a child! (IV, v, 37–39) So infused is she with their repartee that she goes Petruchio one step further, until he relents and admits his own error. Hereafter they never declare their love in so many words, but their mutual affection is always evident. The quintessential statement about marriage, at least in this play, may be found as Katherine speaks before the assemblage at the final wedding banquet: Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance; commits his body To painful labor, both by sea and land: To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou li’st warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience— Too little payment for so great a debt. (V, ii, 146–154) She advocates what for Shakespeare’s time would be an equilibrium between husband and wife. True, the social mores of our day are far different from those of the Renaissance, and our perceptions of propriety have changed. Furthermore, we can have no doubt that Shakespeare believed a woman’s place subordinate to that of her husband. But if that husband is entitled to authority, he is equally charged with the responsibility of dedicating his life to her happiness and welfare. When Katherine compares marriage to the political relationship between prince and subject (V, ii, 155), she clarifies that just as a society’s health is based on a proper hierarchical structure, so the happiness of a marriage is inextricably tied to order. To have all in balance and proportion was an ideal of Shakespeare’s age, and that is the ideal Katherine advocates. Shakespeare therefore evinces a profound respect for how women, through the institution of marriage, contribute to the moral and emotional health of a culture. His tragic and historical plays end with a reestablishment of religious and political order, while his comedies and romances end with a celebration of marriage. Both forms of resolution, however, reflect the reestablishment of the social order. With that vision in mind, perhaps the words of the goddess Juno in The Tempest, blessing the ceremony uniting Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, and Ferdinand, son of Alonso, capture the spirit of an institution that is for Shakespeare a bulwark of harmony and civilization: Honor, riches, marriage-blessing, Long continuance, and increasing, Hourly joys be still upon you! (IV, i, 106–108) |