HENRY IV pt 1 V iii.
Original text
SUFFOLK: Fond man, remember that thou hast a wife; how then can Margaret be thy paramour?
MARGARET: ‘twere best to leave him for he will not hear.
SUFFOLK: There all is marr’d; there lies a cooling card.
MARGAERT: he talks at random; sure the man is mad.
Text as prose
SUFFOLK: (talking to himself and to the audience)
Mad and besotted man, remember that you are married! How then can Margaret be your lover/mistress?
MARGARET: (talking to herself and to the audience)
The best thing would be to leave him, because he refuses to hear what I’m saying.
SUFFOLK: (as before)
My marriage spoils all my chances of getting Margaret; that dashes all my hopes.
MARGARET: (as before).
He is talking wildly, making no sense; he is definitely insane.
Analysis
This part of the scene uses a theatrical convention where the audience can hear what each character is thinking but also that, at some moments, each character can hear (sometimes only partially) what the other is saying. For the actor speaking an ‘aside,’ (spoken to the audience and not observed or heard by other characters on stage), that the actor speaking the aside looks directly at the audience (or the camera). The other characters do not make eye contact with or look at the speaker, so giving the impression that they have not seen or heard his brief popping out of the scene. However in this particular scene, Suffolk and Margaret seem to hear at least part of their partner’s aside, so the eye-contact rule (and possibly the volume of speech) are different at various moments of the scene. They play with the convention as a ‘quid pro quo.’
Suffolk talks to himself/the audience using ‘thou’ and Margaret also uses ‘thou’ to him until her challenge: ‘And yet I would that you would answer me.’ Actors, have a look at the ‘thou and you’ paper I have written and see if these changes of address are of interest in the relationship between these two people.
Suffolk uses a gambling image with the ‘cooling card’: a card played by your adversary, which means that you have lost the game. He is gambling, of course, with his plan to win Margaret for himself and also to get power in England through her, once she is married to King Henry.
Shakespeare gets his story from Hall’s History of the years 1444-5.
How does this scene fit into the dramatic structure of the play/trilogy? How would the story change if it were cut? Shakespeare is introducing one of his major characters here: Margaret is central in the 3 parts of Henry 1V and in Richard 111, seen as a warrior queen, as a tragic mother, dominant wife, ruthless politician and soldier, adoring lover, and revengeful woman claiming God’s justice on those who have wronged her. And (with useful hindsight) all her curses come true. Hall describes her thus: ‘this woman excelled all other, as well in beauty and favour as in wit and policie and was of stomack and courage more like a man then a woman…’ She is suitably partnered with Suffolk, as she will be unsuitably married to weak, religious Henry. Suffolk is a clever, brave, ambitious, ruthless and attractive man who truly loves her and loses his life because of it.
And Shakespeare introduces her in a sprightly comedic scene — she is flirting, beautiful, young, witty — just after we have seen Joan of Arc, another courageous woman leading men in battle, captured and cursing (none of her French curses come true!). Two women labelled as ‘like men,’ so ‘un-natural.’ Both were continually attacked by the men around them and both were defeated.
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RICHARD III. IV. iv.
Original text
RICHARD: Who intercepts me in my expedition?
DUCHESS: O, she that might have intercepted thee by strangling thee in her accursed womb from all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done.
ELIZABETH: Hid’st thou that forehead with a golden crown where should be branded (if that right were right) the slaughter of the prince that ow’d that crown and the dire death of my poor sons and brothers?
Text as prose
RICHARD: Who are these women preventing the progress of my army on the way to battle?
DUCHESS: I am the woman who could have prevented your own birth by strangling you in my cursed womb, you hateful man, and so prevented all those murders which you have done.
ELIZABETH: Are you hiding your forehead with that golden crown, where (if there were justice) there should be burned into your forehead the evidence of the murder of the prince who rightfully owned that crown and the fearful deaths of my poor sons and brothers.
Analysis
In Act 4 of any play there is the lowest, most dangerous part of the story, where the villains seem to be winning. This is so that the ending can have its full dramatic effect of ‘happy ever after’ or, in tragedy, a heap of dead bodies and some resolution and justice. Here the bereaved women confront Richard with his crimes: his mother can only wish that she had never given birth to this monster, and Elizabeth accuses him of killing her two sons by King Edward, her son by Lord Grey in her first marriage and her brother Lord Rivers. (Edward IV died on April 9th 1483 and Lord Rivers and Sir Richard Grey were executed on the 30th; the Princes in the Tower were probably murdered early September; Richard’s coronation was on July 6th.)
Elizabeth accuses Richard of hiding the evidence of his murders under his crown: she claims that if there were justice in the world he would be branded, as thieves and murderers were in Shakespeare’s time.
There is a series of passionate questions from the women, listing Richard’s victims: Elizabeth’s three sons (Edward V, Richard of York and Richard Grey, from her first marriage, and her brother Lord Rivers). The Duchess’ son, Richard’s brother Clarence and his son Edward. Elizabeth asks again about her brother Lord Rivers, their friend Vaughan and, again, her elder son Richard Grey. The Duchess asks after Lord Hastings, executed by Richard when he refused to agree to the murder of the Princes.
The word ‘slaughter’ is used twice in this short passage; an ugly violent word, often used for the killing of animals; it is used 7 times in the play, memorably by the murderer sent by Richard to kill his brother Clarence in the Tower. ‘Ow’d’ = ‘owned.’ I suggest that the actor uses the word ‘owned’ to make the meaning clear.
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CYMBELINE.
Original text
IACHIMO: Thanks, fairest lady. What! Are men mad? Hath Nature given them eyes to see this vaulted arch and the rich crop of sea and land, which can distinguish ‘twixt the fiery orbs above and the twinned stones upon the numbered beach, and can we not partition make with spectacles so precious between fair and foul?
IMOGEN: What makes your admiration?
IACHIMO: It cannot be in the eye, for apes and monkeys twixt two such shes would chatter this way and contemn with mows the other.
IMOGEN: What dear sir thus raps you? Are you well?
Text as prose
IACHIMO: Thanks, most beautiful lady. What is this! Are men insane? Has Nature given them eyes to see this arching sky and the rich harvest of the sea and the land, with eyes that can see the difference between the sun and the moon above and the pebbles on the beach which look all the same, and yet, can we men not find the difference between things precious to our sight and things that are ugly? Can we not distinguish between fair and foul?
IMOGEN: What is making you so astonished?
IACHIMO: it cannot be the fault of our eyes; because apes and monkeys, comparing two such women (as fair Imogen and a foul prostitute) would praise her / make approving noises at this one [Imogen] and condemn with grimaces/make horrid faces at the other woman.
IMOGEN: What, dear sir, is this strange state, this rapture, that you are in? Are you all right?
Analysis
Iachimo’s language in this scene is complex. You will see in the Arden edition notes that there are some questions from various editors to what words are used and what they mean. (When you refer to a full script you will see that I have made some small internal cuts in this part of the scene.) The answer is to choose what makes the best sense to you.
Here we have another scene where there are asides which seem at times to be overheard by the other character: Iachimo is using the ploy of seeming to be so overcome by Imogen’s beauty and his disgust at the thought that her husband is consorting with Roman prostitutes that he cannot contain his indignation and concern. He succeeds in catching Imogen’s attention, even while she is reading her husband’s letter and, after Pisanio has left, he clarifies his story of Posthumus as the ‘ jolly Britain,’ giving him no excuses for his faithlessness to his wife.
Apes and monkeys were types of lust (see Othello’s outburst). Iachimo says that even these animals could see the difference and choose beauty and purity over foulness. Imogen has time during the scene to understand this shocking message; her joy and relief, finding it to be false, makes her trust Iachimo completely.
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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
Original text
BENEDICK: I do love nothing in the world as well as you. Is that not strange?
BEATRICE: As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you, but believe me not… and yet I lie not. I confess nothing and I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin.
BENEDICK: By my sword Beatrice, thou lovest me.
Text into prose
BENEDICK: I love you more than anything in the world. Isn’t that strange?
BEATRICE: To hear you say that is as strange, as unknown, to me as the act of love. It could almost be possible for me to say that I loved you more than anything in the world. But, do not believe me… but I am not telling a lie. I am not confessing anything and I am not denying anything. I am so sad about poor Hero.
BENEDICK: I swear by my sword, Beatrice, that you do love me.
Analysis
Again in Act 4 there is a major crisis which could lead to death and disaster in this happy family group. Hero’s tragic wedding brings open truth-telling to Beatrice and Benedick, after all the lies, jokes and plottings. The scene is in prose — short lines — many entirely of single-syllables, so a very English diction after the elaborate Latinate language of the previous scene in verse. No time is lost. Beatrice pushes the climax on by walking out on Benedick when he refuses to kill his best friend. She gives him the ultimatum: if you really love me more than anything in the world, as you have just sworn, then you will do it. Swearing on a sword is a fairly mild oath… the cross-piece of a sword is like a crucifix, so it does have a religious aspect. But still, an oath is an oath and should be honoured; otherwise the swearer is ‘forsworn,’ an offence to God and a sin in human society.
Beatrice refers to ‘the thing I know not’; ‘thing’ in Shakespeare can often mean a penis and to ‘know’ can mean to have sex with, as it does in the Bible. I think that Beatrice is reminding Benedick (and herself) that she is still a virgin and that to admit that she loves him is a commitment to marriage and so to sex with him. We know that they did have a flirtation, or even possibly an engagement, some years before the play begins, and that for some reason (did Benedick chicken out?) it came to nothing.
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