The Banished Dukes

Both plays that I am focusing on right now, The Tempest and As You Like It, have banished dukes, so I thought that a comparison was in order for these dukes in these two very different plays.

Prospero:

Was the Duke of Milan.

Banished by his brother Antonio and fled for his life with his daughter Miranda on a boat.

Stranded on an Island and gains magical power on the island after losing it politically.

Seeks revenge on his usurpers by stranding them on his island.

Lets his daughter marry the King of Naples' (who helped his brother get rid of him) son Ferdinand.

Gets his dukedom back in the end.

Duke Senior:

Was the Duke of (Shakespeare doesn't tell us)

Banished by his brother

Frederick-did not put up much of a fight to keep his dukedom

Seeks refuge in the Forest of Ardenne with some trusted followers and more flock to him, including his own banished daughter Rosalind and Celia the

usurping duke's daughter.

Is content in the forest and says that he learns just as much from the forest than in a library.

Consents to his daughter marrying Orlando, especially because he was great friends with Orlando's father, Sir Rowland de Bois

Gets dukedom back because his brother decides randomly to become religious.

Conclusion:

From doing this comparison, I think that Shakespeare preferred a character like Prospero over one like Duke Senior. He likes a character with a little fire in them - some revenge, some mischief, but good overall. Like Kate in the Taming of the Shrew, even though it seems like she doesn't get the better end of the bargain in the end. Duke Senior was content to start a new life in the Forest of Ardenne and just happened to get his dukedom back in the end because the play was a Comedy, whereas Prospero had to, first of all, work on his magic for twelve years in order to get revenge on his usurpers, and then put in a lot of effort to see all of his plans work out to be reinstated.

It might also be the Shakespeare's plays were getting a little more mature by the time he wrote The Tempest, which was between 1610-1611, and As You Like It was written between 1598-1600. Because he wrote so many plays, a lot of them are spin-offs or commentaries on others. Perhaps he liked the idea of the banished duke, and decided to take that idea further in The Tempest because it was not taken advantage of in As You Like It.

Babies, suicidal girlfriends, and cranky housewives

It is kind of hard to live up to a wedding...

After having fun with my last blog post, I was having a hard time with the feeling that I had to somehow live up to my life comparison. None of my ideas for a post seemed good, so I decided to type Love's Labor's Lost into Google and pick my favorite hits:

ER Season 1 Episode 18: Love's Labor's Lost is about Dr. Greene messing up a routine pregnancy check, ending up in a surgery because of personal distraction. This apparently was George Clooney's favorite ER episode.

Daredevil: Love's Labor's Lost "Daredevil and those closest to him face heartbreak in all its forms as new relationships blossom, old loves fade away, and tragedy takes its toll."

Real Housewives of New Jersey: Love's Labor's Lost "Women. When we are young, we have our own dreams for our careers, and our own goals. And then, you fall in love."

It seems like this is a pretty easy title to steal. The funny thing is that in reading all of these synopses, none of them really have to do with the play, Love's Labor's Lost. They are all just taking the title for the fun of it being a Shakespeare play, and an alliterative one. But, I am going to try and compare them!

ER uses the title because of the pregnancy glitch that is central to the show. Get it, "Labor?" However, Greene misdiagnoses the pregnant woman, just like Costard gives the wrong letter to the wrong woman - mixing up Jaquenetta and Rosaline's respective letters.

Daredevil uses the title because apparently this blind lawyer vigilante has lots of relationship problems. But, also his former girlfriend Heather Glenn commits suicide in this part of the series. So, I am going out on a limb here and saying that this could be the fate of one of Biron if Rosaline does not come back in a year, since he is spending that whole time in a hospital...

Real Housewives of New Jersey is Love's Labor's Lost because its a bunch of women hanging out together and talking smack, and then acting differently around the men. It's like how the women speak in prose amongst each other, but then speak in poetry when they are talking to the men.

So, none of these examples have mushy wedding themes in them, but there is a lot of marriage and relationship themes going on, and some pregnancy for those baby-hungry Provoites.

Broken Pledges: Shakespearean and Mine

When reading Love's Labor's Lost, I can identify myself with the men who pledge their scholarly allegiance to the king. How can this be? Well, a little over a year ago, I was done with the whole BYU dating game and decided that I was going to devote my Junior Year of schooling to serving others, getting awesome grades, and preparing to go on a mission the following year. However, obviously since I am currently blogging about Shakespeare instead of knocking on doors, this plan of mine was foiled. (Of course, I am glad).

Just as I was beginning to enact my pledge as King Ferdinand and his men did, my "Princess of France" showed up, too. But, the comparison only goes so far, because I cannot say that I was writing poetry and trying to woo someone after that. I was pretty stuck in my "pledge" and had to get wooed myself. Another aspect that is definitely not the same, is that after the declaring of love, etc., I did not leave for a year like the women do in Love's Labor's Lost. Devin and I got married at the end of the summer, and he even followed me to Virginia, where I had a couple jobs already lined up, and worked so that we could be together all summer.

So, I can understand the whole scholarly pledge thing with the men of the court, but I cannot understand how they could just break their pledge, really without a second thought, and then after all that, let their ladies go when all the love works out. Yes, they complain about them leaving and say that they will spend the year in a hospital, etc. but they still end up letting them go. Devin is a better man than them - he wouldn't take "I'm leaving" for an answer and followed. It makes their love seem like infatuation to me, and not the kind of long-lasting marriage love...

As You Like It: A Preview

As You Like It: I got pretty excited doing all of the research, and it was hard to not to make a huge essay about everything that I learned in my extensive preview. So, if you want to learn lots of cool stuff that I based my learning plan on, keep reading after this paragraph! But, before going into detail, here is what I really want to focus on in this play:

1. The Theme of Love, especially the kind(s) of love shown in the play, and how this love affects social reform (see Pastoral below)

2. The Art of Artifice - what is real and what is fake. This is especially applied to Rosalind, whose character I am extremely intrigued by.

3. Applications of "As You Like It" to modern day. Even just the application of the title is relevant. It seems like the play could have some interesting parallels, especially in relation to social criticism/reform.

Source: It seems like all of Shakespeare's play ideas are never accredited to him, but borrowed from a previous story. However, this does not bother me, because I think that art is never truly original. We are all influenced by the world around us, and therefore art is always a form of "copy." The source of the idea for "As You Like It" is Thomas Lodge's "Rosalynde Euphues' Golden Legacy" which also had a previous source called "The Tale of Gamelyn."

Pastoral: This type of play has exiles from urban life or court life who escape to the countryside. The pastoral is the perfect genre for social criticism or to inspire social reform. As You Like It has many refugees from court life including banished should-be kings, run away princesses, banished daughters to the should-be-king, wanted men, run away court jesters...the list goes on.

Comedy: As You Like It is also a comedy because it pokes fun at the conventions of romantic love. The characters themselves often lament suffering caused by their love, but they are quite unconvincing as it is obvious that they are enjoying being crossed in love. There is also cross-dressing and complete 180 turn-arounds in love, and an ending where everything miraculously turns out.

Setting: This is always an interesting part of the work, since it is usually based in reality for Shakespeare, but also contrived. The forest of Arden supposedly based on the forest near Shakespeare's home-town of Stratford-upon-Avon. Some scholars also attribute it to the biblical Garden of Eden.

Rosalind: She is definitely the main character through my research, and a pretty exciting, complex, female character. By the end of the play, she proves that love is the source of delight, but in the introductory scene, her cousin Celia is telling her of the curative power of love. So, it seems like she is going to do some changing too, while she is changing everyone else in the forest!

Themes: city life v. country life, LOVE, young v. old, born with nobility v. acquiring social standing (see my previous blog post on this topic in relation to "The Winter's Tale"), CHOICES, the complexity of life.

Famous quotations: "all the world's a stage..." "too much of a good thing"

Film: Kenneth Branagh's "As You Like It" has mixed reviews online. I watched the trailer and it looked like he focused mostly on Rosalind and Orlando's relationship, so we will have to see how much that is the focus in the actual play. Some other interesting things is that he had it set in Japan, and cast Orlando as a black man...

Hamlet vs. Laertes - Righteousness

People often compare Laertes and Hamlet, and both do have a lot of similarities, but I would like to point out a difference that, I think, at least casts Hamlet in a little more favorable light in this instance. In Act III scene iii, Hamlet resolves that he will kill Claudius, and goes to the king's chamber to find him "praying" (we find out a few lines later that he was trying to pray but to no avail). Anyways, Hamlet decides that he cannot kill Claudius right then, because he was doing something righteous and "And so he goes to heaven, And so am I reveng'd. That would be scann'd. A villain kills my father; and for that, I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven."

Laertes, on the other hand, does not care about righteousness or wickedness, he just wants revenge. Claudius asks him how far he would go to kill Hamlet and he responds, "To cut his throat i' th' church" (Act IV scene vii)! Obviously Laertes is a little more bloodthirsty than Hamlet, and goes as far as not worrying about his own soul as well as others. Which character is the better person? I say neither, for many reasons.

Hermione vs. Hermione

I'm sure a lot of you have noticed that Leontes' wife's name is Hermione. Blame pop culture / J.K. Rowling but I immediately thought of Hermione Granger of Harry Potter when I read the play summary... So who is better? Here are their strengths:

Shakespeare's Hermione: Even though her husband is so cruel to her and accuses her of adultery with his childhood best friend, she doesn't speak out against him; she gives birth to two kids (props to any mom); she doesn't stuff it Leontes' face when he is wrong; she is good at persuasion, she comes to life after being a statue

Hermione Granger: super smart, can do magic even though her parents are muggles, has kids (see epilogue of the 7th book), keeps a ton of people alive especially by helping defeat the most evil wizard ever, has a ton of guys crushing on her....

I think the choice is clear. Even though Hermione is a pretty good character, Hermione Granger wins. I mean, she can do magic.