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........The ending of As You Like It validates this observation. In its final act, the villainous Duke Frederick inexplicably reforms, reconciles with his brother, and willingly returns to his brother the dukedom that he had unjustly seized. At the end of Measure for Measure, the lecherous Angelo–a thoroughgoing miscreant–suddenly, and without explanation, mends his evil behavior and marries a woman he previously rejected. In All’s Well That Ends Well, an arrogant, egotistical, aristocratic husband, Bertram, abandons his loving, lower-class wife, Helena, regarding her as little more than an annoying pustule. But at the end of the play, he has a life-changing epiphany (who knows why) in which he accepts Helena after her supporters trick him into a tryst with her in a silly mistaken-identity scheme.  ........Unexplained
plot developments also occur in other Shakespeare plays–anywhere. In King
John, Queen Elinor drops dead, period. There is no explanation–no foreshadowing
cough, no murder plot, no unruly horse to throw her. She just dies. In
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Claudius orders the young prince
to England with devious Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But pirates appear
deus ex machina to become the unwitting saviors of Hamlet–“thieves
of mercy,” he calls them–and they ferry him back to Denmark. In Richard
III, Lady Anne curses Richard as a “dreadful minister of hell,” spits
on him, then–miracle of miracles–agrees to marry him.
........Shakespeare also composed inscrutable phrases and passages that make hieroglyphics models of clarity by comparison. Who among us–without aid of an annotated text, a dictionary, and a row of history books–can decipher the precise meaning of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s justification for the invasion of France in Henry V? (Canterbury’s speech begins at Line 33 in Act I, Scene II.) ........American poet, critic, and teacher Mark Van Doren (1894-1972) faults Shakespeare for another language faux pas: mechanical, standardized speech patterns in Julius Caesar. In his book Twentieth Century Interpretations of Julius Caesar (Prentice Hall, 1968), Leonard F. Dean quotes Van Doren as saying:
........Whether in speeches or clever rejoinders, Shakespeare was also wont to mix metaphors on occasion. The most famous crossbred metaphor occurs in Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy in the fourth line: “To take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.” (How does one arm himself against water?) In Henry VI Part I, Joan of Arc declares in Act V, Scene IV, that “maiden blood . . . will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven.” (Blood may stain, outline, sketch, delineate, and limn, but its talents come a cropper at crying.) In Act I, Scene I, of the same play, Gloucester observes, “Had not churchmen prayed, his thread of life had not so soon decayed.” (One thinks of threads–whether literal or figurative–as breaking or snapping, not decaying.) ........Excessive wordplay was another of Shakespeare’s weaknesses, notably in his early plays, when he too frequently salted his verse with puns. In Act II, Scene I, of Richard II, John of Gaunt coughs up puns even while dying. After King Richard asks Gaunt how he fares as he nears death, Gaunt uses his name (the same as the adjective gaunt, meaning thin, bony and haggard) in the following reply:
........In of Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio and Romeo bounce wordplay back and forth like tennis players competing for set point. The effect is cloying and tiresome:
........Shakespeare could also bounce time in any direction. For example, in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Hamlet is a teenager in Act I but a thirty-year-old in Act V. Yet only months pass between the beginning and the end of the play. Apparently, Shakespeare neglected to rewrite the gravedigger scene when revising an early draft with an older Hamlet. In Julius Caesar, a clock strikes three in Act II, Scene 1, and eight in Act II, Scene II. However, clocks that struck the hour did not appear in history until the 14th Century A.D. In Cymbeline, a play set in ancient times, characters speak of France and Britain even though neither country existed at that time as a nation or political entity with undisputed borders. France was Gaul; Britain was Britannia. In Troilus and Cressida, set at the time of the Trojan War, Hector quotes Aristotle. But Aristotle was born many centuries after the Trojan War ........In addition, Shakespeare frequently imposed English customs and dress on the foreign cultures he wrote about. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse observes that Juliet will celebrate her fourteenth birthday on Lammas-eve (Act I, Scene III). Lammas Day, August 1, marked the beginning of a harvest festival celebrated in England, but not in Verona, Italy, where Romeo and Juliet is set. In Julius Caesar, Casca describes a scene in which Caesar opens his doublet, a tight-fitting jacket–with or without sleeves–worn in England and other European countries from 1300 to 1600.. ........Besides manipulating time and customs, Shakespeare also manipulated biographical accounts about historical personages and even altered geographical boundaries. For example, in the former case, he presented Richard III (1452-1485) in the play of the same name as one of the most evil rulers in history. However, the historical Richard, though unscrupulous, was not as ruthless as depicted. Nor was he a hunchback–or at least no reliable evidence exists to suggest that he was. After Richard’s brother, King Edward IV, died in 1483 Parliament declared Richard king instead of Edward's young son on grounds that Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was illegal. Parliament said Edward had earlier agreed to marry another woman. To secure his position as king, Richard confined both of the late king's boys to the Tower of London, where they were later killed. There is no proof that Richard ordered them killed, as Shakespeare tells us. As to geography, Shakespeare described Bohemia in The Winter’s Tale as a seaport. In fact, Bohemia was landlocked in central Europe. © 2003  |