Themes for Much Ado About Nothing

THEMES

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Ideal of Social Grace

The characters’ dense, colorful manner of speaking represents the ideal that Renaissance courtiers strove for in their social interactions. The play’s language is heavily laden with metaphor and ornamented by rhetoric. Benedick, Claudio, and Don Pedro all produce the kind of witty banter that courtiers used to attract attention and approval in noble households. Courtiers were expected to speak in highly contrived language but to make their clever performances seem effortless. The most famous model for this kind of behavior is Baldassare Castiglione’s sixteenth-century manual The Courtier, translated into English by Thomas Hoby in 1561. According to this work, the ideal courtier masks his effort and appears to project elegance and natural grace by means of what Castiglione calls sprezzatura, the illusion of effortlessness. Benedick and his companions try to display their polished social graces both in their behavior and in their speech.

The play pokes fun at the fanciful language of love that courtiers used. When Claudio falls in love, he tries to be the perfect courtier by using intricate language. As Benedick notes: “His words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes” (II.iii.18–19). Although the young gallants in the play seem casual in their displays of wit, they constantly struggle to maintain their social positions. Benedick and Claudio must constantly strive to remain in Don Pedro’s favor. When Claudio silently agrees to let Don Pedro take his place to woo Hero, it is quite possible that he does so not because he is too shy to woo the woman himself, but because he must accede to Don Pedro’s authority in order to stay in Don Pedro’s good favor. When Claudio believes that Don Pedro has deceived him and wooed Hero not for Claudio but for himself, he cannot drop his polite civility, even though he is full of despair. Beatrice jokes that Claudio is “civil as an orange,” punning on the Seville orange, a bitter fruit (II.i.256). Claudio remains polite and nearly silent even though he is upset, telling Benedick of Don Pedro and Hero: “I wish him joy of her” (II.i.170). Clearly, Claudio chooses his obedience to Don Pedro over his love for Hero.

Claudio displays social grace, but his strict adherence to social propriety eventually leads him into a trap. He abandons Hero at the wedding because Don John leads him to believe that she is unchaste (marriage to an unchaste woman would be socially unacceptable). But Don John’s plan to unseat Claudio does not succeed, of course, as Claudio remains Don Pedro’s favorite, and it is Hero who has to suffer until her good reputation is restored.

Deception as a Means to an End

The plot of Much Ado About Nothing is based upon deliberate deceptions, some malevolent and others benign. The duping of Claudio and Don Pedro results in Hero’s disgrace, while the ruse of her death prepares the way for her redemption and reconciliation with Claudio. In a more lighthearted vein, Beatrice and Benedick are fooled into thinking that each loves the other, and they actually do fall in love as a result. Much Ado About Nothing shows that deceit is not inherently evil, but something that can be used as a means to good or bad ends.

In the play, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between good and bad deception. When Claudio announces his desire to woo Hero, Don Pedro takes it upon himself to woo her for Claudio. Then, at the instigation of Don John, Claudio begins to mistrust Don Pedro, thinking he has been deceived. Just as the play’s audience comes to believe, temporarily, in the illusions of the theater, so the play’s characters become caught up in the illusions that they help to create for one another. Benedick and Beatrice flirt caustically at the masked ball, each possibly aware of the other’s presence yet pretending not to know the person hiding behind the mask. Likewise, when Claudio has shamed and rejected Hero, Leonato and his household “publish” that Hero has died in order to punish Claudio for his mistake. When Claudio returns, penitent, to accept the hand of Leonato’s “niece” (actually Hero), a group of masked women enters and Claudio must wed blindly. The masking of Hero and the other women reveals that the social institution of marriage has little to do with love. When Claudio flounders and asks, “Which is the lady I must seize upon?” he is ready and willing to commit the rest of his life to one of a group of unknowns (V.iv.53). His willingness stems not only from his guilt about slandering an innocent woman but also from the fact that he may care more about rising in Leonato’s favor than in marrying for love. In the end, deceit is neither purely positive nor purely negative: it is a means to an end, a way to create an illusion that helps one succeed socially.

The Importance of Honor

The aborted wedding ceremony, in which Claudio rejects Hero, accusing her of infidelity and violated chastity and publicly shaming her in front of her father, is the climax of the play. In Shakespeare’s time, a woman’s honor was based upon her virginity and chaste behavior. For a woman to lose her honor by having sexual relations before marriage meant that she would lose all social standing, a disaster from which she could never recover. Moreover, this loss of honor would poison the woman’s whole family. Thus, when Leonato rashly believes Claudio’s shaming of Hero at the wedding ceremony, he tries to obliterate her entirely: “Hence from her, let her die” (IV.i.153). Furthermore, he speaks of her loss of honor as an indelible stain from which he cannot distance himself, no matter how hard he tries: “O she is fallen / Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea / Hath drops too few to wash her clean again” (IV.i.138–140). For women in that era, the loss of honor was a form of annihilation.

For men, on the other hand, honor depended on male friendship alliances and was more military in nature. Unlike a woman, a man could defend his honor, and that of his family, by fighting in a battle or a duel. Beatrice urges Benedick to avenge Hero’s honor by dueling to the death with Claudio. As a woman, Hero cannot seize back her honor, but Benedick can do it for her via physical combat.

MOTIFS

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Public Shaming

Even though Hero is ultimately vindicated, her public shaming at the wedding ceremony is too terrible to be ignored. In a sense, this kind of humiliation incurs more damage to her honor and her family name than would an act of unchaste behavior—an transgression she never commits. The language that both Claudio and Leonato use to shame Hero is extremely strong. To Claudio she is a “rotten orange” (IV.i.30), and to Leonato a rotting carcass that cannot be preserved: “the wide sea / Hath . . . / . . . salt too little which may season give / To her foul tainted flesh!” (IV.i.139–142).

Shame is also what Don John hopes will cause Claudio to lose his place as Don Pedro’s favorite: once Claudio is discovered to be engaged to a loose woman, Don John believes that Don Pedro will reject Claudio as he rejected Don John long ago. Shame is a form of social punishment closely connected to loss of honor. A product of an illegitimate sexual coupling himself, Don John has grown up constantly reminded of his own social shame, and he will do anything to right the balance. Ironically, in the end Don John is shamed and threatened with torture to punish him for deceiving the company. Clearly, he will never gain a good place in courtly society.

Noting

In Shakespeare’s time, the “Nothing” of the title would have been pronounced “Noting.” Thus, the play’s title could read: “Much Ado About Noting.” Indeed, many of the players participate in the actions of observing, listening, and writing, or noting. In order for a plot hinged on instances of deceit to work, the characters must note one another constantly. When the women manipulate Beatrice into believing that Benedick adores her, they conceal themselves in the orchard so that Beatrice can better note their conversation. Since they know that Beatrice loves to eavesdrop, they are sure that their plot will succeed: “look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs / Close by the ground to hear our conference,” notes Hero (III.i.24–25). Each line the women speak is a carefully placed note for Beatrice to take up and ponder; the same is true of the scheme to convince Benedick of Beatrice’s passion.

Don John’s plot to undo Claudio also hinges on noting: in order for Claudio to believe that Hero is unchaste and unfaithful, he must be brought to her window to witness, or note, Margaret (whom he takes to be Hero) bidding farewell to Borachio in the semidarkness. Dogberry, Verges, and the rest of the comical night watch discover and arrest Don John because, although ill-equipped to express themselves linguistically, they overhear talk of the Margaret--Borachio staging. Despite their verbal deficiencies, they manage to capture Don John and bring him to Leonato, after having had the sexton (a church official) “note” the occurrences of the evening in writing. In the end, noting, in the sense of writing, unites Beatrice and Benedick for good: Hero and Claudio reveal love sonnets written by Beatrice and Benedick, textual evidence that notes and proves their love for one another.

Entertainment

From the witty yet plaintive song that Balthasar sings about the deceitfulness of men to the masked ball and the music and dancing at the end of the play, the characters of Much Ado About Nothing spend much of their time engaging in elaborate spectacles and entertainments. The play’s title encapsulates the sentiment of effervescent and light court entertainment: the two hours’ traffic onstage will be entertaining, comic, and absorbing. The characters who merrily spar and fall in love in the beginning will, of course, end up together in the conclusion. Beatrice compares courtship and marriage to delightful court dances: “wooing, wedding and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinquepace” (II.i.60–61). By including a masquerade as court entertainment in the middle, as well as two songs and a dance at the end, the play presents itself as sheer entertainment, conscious of its own theatricality.

Counterfeiting

The idea of counterfeiting, in the sense of presenting a false face to the world, appears frequently throughout the play. A particularly rich and complex example of counterfeiting occurs as Leonato, Claudio, and Don Pedro pretend that Beatrice is head over heels in love with Benedick so that the eavesdropping Benedick will overhear it and believe it. Luring Benedick into this trap, Leonato ironically dismisses the idea that perhaps Beatrice counterfeits her desire for Benedick, as he and the others counterfeit this love themselves: “O God! Counterfeit? There was never counterfeit of passion came so near the life of passion as she discovers it” (II.iii.98–99).

Another, more serious reference to counterfeiting occurs at the wedding ceremony, as Claudio rhetorically paints a picture of Hero as a perfect counterfeit of innocence, unchaste and impure beneath a seemingly unblemished surface:

She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour.
Behold how like a maid she blushes here!
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
           (IV.i.31–34)

Hero’s supposed counterfeiting is of a grave nature, as it threatens her womanly reputation. It is not her emotions that are being misconstrued, as with Beatrice, but rather her character and integrity.

SYMBOLS

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

The Taming of Wild Animals

The play is peppered with metaphors involving the taming of wild animals. In the case of the courtship between Beatrice and Benedick, the symbol of a tamed savage animal represents the social taming that must occur for both wild souls to be ready to submit themselves to the shackles of love and marriage. Beatrice’s vow to submit to Benedick’s love by “[t]aming my wild heart to thy loving hand” makes use of terms from falconry, suggesting that Benedick is to become Beatrice’s master (III.i.113). In the opening act, Claudio and Don Pedro tease Benedick about his aversion to marriage, comparing him to a wild animal. Don Pedro quotes a common adage, “‘In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke,’” meaning that in time even the savage Benedick will surrender to the taming of love and marriage (I.i.213). Benedick mocks this sentiment, professing that he will never submit to the will of a woman. At the very end, when Benedick and Beatrice agree to marry, Claudio pokes fun at Benedick’s mortified countenance, suggesting that Benedick is reluctant to marry because he remembers the allusion to tamed bulls:

Tush, fear not, man, we’ll tip thy horns with gold,
And all Europa shall rejoice at thee
As once Europa did at lusty Jove
When he would play the noble beast in love.
           (V.iv.44–47)

Claudio changes Benedick from a laboring farm animal, a bull straining under a yoke, to a wild god, empowered by his bestial form to take sexual possession of his lady. While the bull of marriage is the sadly yoked, formerly savage creature, the bull that Claudio refers to comes from the classical myth in which Zeus took the form of a bull and carried off the mortal woman Europa. This second bull is supposed to represent the other side of the coin: the bull of bestial male sexuality.

War

Throughout the play, images of war frequently symbolize verbal arguments and confrontations. At the beginning of the play, Leonato relates to the other characters that there is a “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick: “They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them” (I.i.50–51). Beatrice carries on this martial imagery, describing how, when she won the last duel with Benedick, “four of his five wits went halting off” (I.i.53). When Benedick arrives, their witty exchange resembles the blows and parries of a well-executed fencing match. Leonato accuses Claudio of killing Hero with words: “Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart” (V.i.68). Later in the same scene, Benedick presents Claudio with a violent verbal challenge: to duel to the death over Hero’s honor. When Borachio confesses to staging the loss of Hero’s innocence, Don Pedro describes this spoken evidence as a sword that tears through Claudio’s heart: “Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?” (V.i.227), and Claudio responds that he has already figuratively committed suicide upon hearing these words: “I have drunk poison whiles he uttered it” (V.i.228).

Hero’s Death

Claudio’s powerful words accusing Hero of unchaste and disloyal acts cause her to fall down in apparent lifelessness. Leonato accentuates the direness of Hero’s state, pushing her further into seeming death by renouncing her, “Hence from her, let her die” (IV.i.153). When Friar Francis, Hero, and Beatrice convince Leonato of his daughter’s innocence, they maintain that she really has died, in order to punish Claudio and give Hero a respectable amount of time to regain her honor, which, although not lost, has been publicly savaged. Claudio performs all the actions of mourning Hero, paying a choir to sing a dirge at her tomb. In a symbolic sense, Hero has died, since, although she is pure, Claudio’s damning accusation has permanently besmirched her name. She must symbolically die and be reborn pure again in order for Claudio to marry her a second time. Hero’s false death is less a charade aimed to induce remorse in Claudio than it is a social ritual designed to cleanse her name and person of infamy.

Character List for Much Ado About Nothing

CHARACTER LIST

Beatrice -  Leonato’s niece and Hero’s cousin. Beatrice is “a pleasant-spirited lady” with a very sharp tongue. She is generous and loving, but, like Benedick, continually mocks other people with elaborately tooled jokes and puns. She wages a war of wits against Benedick and often wins the battles. At the outset of the play, she appears content never to marry.

Benedick -  An aristocratic soldier who has recently been fighting under Don Pedro, and a friend of Don Pedro and Claudio. Benedick is very witty, always making jokes and puns. He carries on a “merry war” of wits with Beatrice, but at the beginning of the play he swears he will never fall in love or marry.

Claudio -  A young soldier who has won great acclaim fighting under Don Pedro during the recent wars. Claudio falls in love with Hero upon his return to Messina. His unfortunately suspicious nature makes him quick to believe evil rumors and hasty to despair and take revenge.

Hero -  The beautiful young daughter of Leonato and the cousin of Beatrice. Hero is lovely, gentle, and kind. She falls in love with Claudio when he falls for her, but when Don John slanders her and Claudio rashly takes revenge, she suffers terribly.

Don Pedro -  An important nobleman from Aragon, sometimes referred to as “Prince.” Don Pedro is a longtime friend of Leonato, Hero’s father, and is also close to the soldiers who have been fighting under him—the younger Benedick and the very young Claudio. Don Pedro is generous, courteous, intelligent, and loving to his friends, but he is also quick to believe evil of others and hasty to take revenge. He is the most politically and socially powerful character in the play.

Leonato -  A respected, well-to-do, elderly noble at whose home, in Messina, Italy, the action is set. Leonato is the father of Hero and the uncle of Beatrice. As governor of Messina, he is second in social power only to Don Pedro.

Don John -  The illegitimate brother of Don Pedro; sometimes called “the Bastard.” Don John is melancholy and sullen by nature, and he creates a dark scheme to ruin the happiness of Hero and Claudio. He is the villain of the play; his evil actions are motivated by his envy of his brother’s social authority.

Margaret -  Hero’s serving woman, who unwittingly helps Borachio and Don John deceive Claudio into thinking that Hero is unfaithful. Unlike Ursula, Hero’s other lady-in-waiting, Margaret is lower class. Though she is honest, she does have some dealings with the villainous world of Don John: her lover is the mistrustful and easily bribed Borachio. Also unlike Ursula, Margaret loves to break decorum, especially with bawdy jokes and teases.

Borachio -  An associate of Don John. Borachio is the lover of Margaret, Hero’s serving woman. He conspires with Don John to trick Claudio and Don Pedro into thinking that Hero is unfaithful to Claudio. His name means “drunkard” in Italian, which might serve as a subtle direction to the actor playing him.

Conrad -  One of Don John’s more intimate associates, entirely devoted to Don John. Several recent productions have staged Conrad as Don John’s potential male lover, possibly to intensify Don John’s feelings of being a social outcast and therefore motivate his desire for revenge.

Dogberry -  The constable in charge of the Watch, or chief policeman, of Messina. Dogberry is very sincere and takes his job seriously, but he has a habit of using exactly the wrong word to convey his meaning. Dogberry is one of the few “middling sort,” or middle-class characters, in the play, though his desire to speak formally and elaborately like the noblemen becomes an occasion for parody.

Verges -  The deputy to Dogberry, chief policeman of Messina.

Antonio -  Leonato’s elderly brother, and Hero and Beatrice’s uncle.

Balthasar -  A waiting man in Leonato’s household and a musician. Balthasar flirts with Margaret at the masked party and helps Leonato, Claudio, and Don Pedro trick Benedick into falling in love with Beatrice. Balthasar sings the song, “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more” about accepting men’s infidelity as natural.

Ursula -  One of Hero’s waiting women.

Context for Much Ado About Nothing

CONTEXT

T he most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part-owner of the Globe Theater. His career bridged the reigns of Elizabeth I (ruled 1558–1603) and James I (ruled 1603–1625), and he was a favorite of both monarchs. Indeed, James granted Shakespeare’s company the greatest possible compliment by bestowing upon its members the title of King’s Men. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare’s death, literary luminaries such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.

Shakespeare’s works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was well established. The unprecedented admiration garnered by his works led to a fierce curiosity about Shakespeare’s life, but the dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare’s personal history shrouded in mystery. Some people have concluded from this fact and from Shakespeare’s modest education that Shakespeare’s plays were actually written by someone else—Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford are the two most popular candidates—but the support for this claim is overwhelmingly circumstantial, and the theory is not taken seriously by many scholars.
In the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, Shakespeare must be viewed as the author of the thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets that bear his name. The legacy of this body of work is immense. A number of Shakespeare’s plays seem to have transcended even the category of brilliance, becoming so influential as to affect profoundly the course of Western literature and culture ever after.
Much Ado About Nothing is generally considered one of Shakespeare’s best comedies, because it combines elements of robust hilarity with more serious meditations on honor, shame, and court politics. It was probably written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. Like As You Like It and Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, though interspersed with darker concerns, is a joyful comedy that ends with multiple marriages and no deaths.
Although one of the features of Shakespearean comedy is that no one dies, it would be a mistake to assume that death is absent from this genre. Often, Shakespeare’s comedies are more accepting of death than his tragedies, treating death as part of the natural cycle of life. Much Ado About Nothing is no exception, and Hero’s pretending to die of humiliation makes death more vividly present here than in any of Shakespeare’s other comedies. The crisis that lies at the center of Much Ado About Nothing troubles many readers and viewers, since the play creates a very strong sense of anger, betrayal, hatred, grief, and despair among the main characters. Although the crisis ends quickly, Much Ado About Nothing sometimes seems only steps away from becoming a tragedy.
Indeed, the line between tragedy and comedy is sometimes fuzzy. Many critics have noted that the plot of Much Ado About Nothing shares significant elements with that of Romeo and Juliet. Much Ado About Nothing also shares many features with Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale, which most critics assign to a different genre—that of problem comedy or romance. Like Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, Hero stages a false death only to come back to life once her beloved has repented.
Although the young lovers Hero and Claudio provide the main impetus for the plot, the courtship between the older, wiser lovers Benedick and Beatrice is what makes Much Ado About Nothing so memorable. Benedick and Beatrice argue with delightful wit, and Shakespeare develops their journey from antagonism to sincere love and affection with a rich sense of humor and compassion. Since Beatrice and Benedick have a history behind them that adds weight to their relationship, they are older and more mature than the typical lovers in Shakespeare’s comedies, though their unhealthy competitiveness reveals them to be childish novices when it comes to love.

Class Notes -- January 24

Greetings!

We had a good class today.  For those of you new to my classes, I usually start with a Quick Write exercise to get our creative juices flowing.  I had the students be "theater critics" and write reviews for either of the two plays that we read for today. 

Following this writing exercise, we went over some historical dates related to literature developments.  We discussed briefly the influence that other nations who conquered the little island of England had on the language and therefore literature of that country.  I had assigned the mystery play, "The Second Shepherd's Play" and the morality play, "Everyman" which were late Middle English (Medieval) pieces of literature.  We talked through some of the literary points of "Everyman" first.  This serious play is an allegory similar to Pilgrim's Progress.  The mystery play was bit more light-hearted with some humor.

A key element of this class is the process of analyzing the literature via the class discussion.  I appreciated the thoughtful responses that each of the students gave.  I'm looking forward to "unpacking" our other books. 

Our next book is Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare.  I gave the students some background information on the context, themes, and characters.

Assignment for Next Week:
-- Read the handouts.
-- Read Acts I & II of the play.

This week's blog.
Worksheets (Context, Themes, Characters)

Have a great week,
Mrs. Prichard

Early History of England

450 - 800 AD. The Germanic people invaded England and established a number of kingdoms between 450 and 600 AD. There were many groups of Saxons, Angles and Jutes. They established seven independent kingdoms called ‘Heptarchy’ (a Greek word which means ‘the rule of seven’):Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria. Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex were the main kingdoms who controlled the others whichever was in power, but they always battled among themselves for power.

In 597 the pope of Rome sent Augustine to England to spread Christianity. He was welcomed by the king of Kent who became the first convert, and then, with the help of the king of Kent, conversion vigorously started in England. The capital of the kingdom of Kent was Canterbury, so, Augustine established the cathedral there which was the center of the Church of England. In 601, the pope made Augustine the Archbishop of Canterbury, and thus Augustine became famous as Augustine of Canterbury.

In 829, the Saxon King Egbert of Wessex established his superiority and joined all the kingdoms together. He was thus the first king of the unified kingdom.

800 - 1066. In the early 800’s, Danish Vikings had started attacking the country and had captured quite a few territories (except Wessex) and had settled in the eastern half of the country, but the Saxon King Alfred the Great of Wessex defeated the Danes and pushed them to the north eastern side of England. After Alfred’s death in 899, the kingship weakened and Danish invasions again started and finally in 1016 Canute, son of the Danish king, succeeded in defeating the existing Saxon king of Wessex. Thus, the kingdom of England went into the hands of Danish rulers who ruled until 1042 when it was again conquered by a powerful Saxon king, Edward the Confessor, who ruled up to 1066.

1066 - 1170. After a few peaceful years during the reign of Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror (William I) of Normandy, France, came with a strong force, defeated the Saxon king and became the crowned king of England in 1066. It was called the ‘Norman Conquest.’ William Iestablished a strong government and built cathedrals, castles and the Tower of London. His sonWilliam II, called Rufus, ruled after him. Afterwards, William I’s youngest son, Henry I, became the king. William’s family ruled up till 1154.

During that time civil war broke out because of the conflict between the nobles and the French people, as the nobles wanted to rule their territory in their own style. Consequently, the Normans lost their power and the Duke of Normandy of (French) Plantagenet family, Henry II, became the king in 1154. Henry wanted sole power to govern the churches of England which created a rift between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King of England. But it was easily resolved (in 1170) when the king’s knights came and beheaded the archbishop while he was doing the prayer in the cathedral.

Taken from an article:  Early History of England (400 - 1200)

Class Notes -- January 17

Greetings!

We're beginning a new year and a new class.  I've been looking forward to this class and anticipate some great discussions with the students.

I handed out the syllabus for the class.  I've ordered 4 books for us to read together:  Everyman (anon), Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare), Great Expectations (Dickens), and Pygmalion (Shaw).  We're reading these books in chronological order, and I will be filling in historical and literary details between the readings.  We'll also read a number of selections from Romantic, Metaphysical, and Victorian poets.  Following the Dickens selection, the students will be choosing their own books from a list of suggested novels.  We'll have panel discussions on these books.

This focus of this class is reading and literary analysis.  I like to use the word "unpacking" when referring to literary discussions.  We'll do some short writing assignments related to elements of literature.  The students will write essay exams following 3 of the selections.

For those of you new to my classes, I send out e-mails after each class.  I also have a Dropbox account where I put any worksheets or handouts.  And, finally, I have a blog for each class.  Because  "British Literature" is such a huge topic, I will be posting background and supplemental information on the blog.

This week we began discussing Everyman, a morality play from the late 1400's, possibly by or based on a play by a Flemish man, Peter van Diest.  We read the first few pages aloud and discussed some of the themes.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions.  I prefer e-mails, but you can call my cell phone if your concern is urgent.  (507/581-0270)

Assignments for Next Week:
-- Read The Second Shepherd's Play
-- Read Everyman
-- Answer Study Questions for each (5 for Everyman and 8 for The Second Shepherd's Play
-- Respond to Dropbox invitation.
-- Read blog entries

This week's blog entries:  Class Notes, Spring Syllabus, Intro do the Middle Ages, Info on Everyman

Have a great week!
Mrs. Prichard

About Everyman

About Everyman: Morality Play

Everyman is one of the most famous and best known examples of a medieval morality play (see ‘The Morality Play’). It is, in the words of Arnold Williams, “the morality play best known and most widely performed in modern times”. Modern scholars are fairly sure that the play we know in English is in fact a translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijc, which was published in 1495. A scholar called Dr. Logeman has argued that the writer of Elckerlijc is Petrus Dorlandus, and that has been accepted by some scholars. We know nothing about the person who translated the play into the English version we study today.

In many ways, it is a play startlingly different from our own ideas of drama – perhaps even more remote from us in terms of construction, tone and genre than Shakespeare or (strangely) the Ancient Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Setting aside Everyman himself – and that itself is debatable – the characters are one-dimensional allegorical figures rather than representations of real people, the plot is made clear in the opening speech, and there are no twists or unexpected turns! Yet the Everyman has been a hugely influential text in terms of English drama; Christopher Marlowe, for example, is clearly influenced by the medieval morality play in his Dr. Faustus, which contains parades of personified sins and a dialogue between Faustus’ good and evil angels. The moral of Marlowe’s play – the futility of worldly goods and riches, and the value of faithful Christian observance – also has much in common with morality plays such as Everyman.

We have no record at all of Everyman being performed in the medieval period. This has led to speculation by some scholars about whether it was ever meant to be performed at all. David Miller, in particular, notes that the original Dutch play might have been “intended for private reading, not for theatrical performance. Some support may be given to this view by the description of it as a “treatyse … in maner of a morall playe” in the heading to Skot's edition.” “Treatise” is a word more usually used of a written document which thinks about and discusses a particular, and usually religious, issue.

Yet it is a fact that Everyman addresses the audience and speaks of its ideas being heard rather than read. Noting the popularity in this period of the Miracle cycles, and a little later, of the morality-influenced Dr. Faustus, it seems a little far fetched that the Everyman would not have been performed at all – particularly considering how popular it seems to have been in terms of printing.

There are four early sixteenth-century editions of Everyman that have survived to the modern day: two complete printings by John Skot (likely a medieval spelling of Scott) which bear the title Here begynneth a treatyse how the hye fader of heuen sendeth dethe to somon euery creature to come and gyue a counte of theyr lyues in this Worlde, and is in maner of a morall playe (The sumonyg of eueryman) and two texts which contain only fragments of the original work.

These four texts all date from the same period, somewhere between 1509 and 1531. Clearly, then, there was demand for Everyman from readers of the period; though whether this means that it was performed (and people wanted to buy a copy of the script) or whether it was just an incredibly popular text to read is, like so much else written about Everyman, intelligent guesswork rather than serious, evidenced proposal.

Historically, Everyman was thought of only as an interesting historical document, rather than a play with relevance and interest solely of itself. It seems to have largely disappeared during the Jacobethan period, and only emerges when reprinted in Thomas Hawkins's The Origin of the English Drama in 1773. Even then, it is important to note that it is anthologized only because of its historical, rather than its dramatic, interest.
It was not until 1901 that the revolutionary theatre director and scholar William Poel produced what may have been one of the first ever performances of Everyman in Canterbury. Poel, the forefather of simple text-focused stagings of classical plays, restored the play’s reputation, and following where he had led, another production followed in 1902, which was reviewed by the Manchester Guardian, which praised the production’s ‘‘amazing ingenuity, judgment and care''. Many critics were surprised to notice that the play had real gravitas and solemnity – and was not merely a piece with some historical interest: it could touch an audience in the modern day. A production in New York followed in 1903. Notably, in all three of these productions, a woman played the part of Everyman.

Everyman is now often performed and widely studied in the disciplines of English Literature and drama.

Introduction to Middle Ages English Literature

The Middle Ages is like no other period in The Norton Anthology of English Literature in terms of the time span it covers. Caedmon's Hymn, the earliest English poem to survive as a text (NAEL 8, 1.25-27), belongs to the latter part of the seventh century. The morality play, Everyman, is dated "after 1485" and probably belongs to the early-sixteenth century. In addition, for the Middle Ages, there is no one central movement or event such as the English Reformation, the Civil War, or the Restoration around which to organize a historical approach to the period.


When did "English Literature" begin? Any answer to that question must be problematic, for the very concept of English literature is a construction of literary history, a concept that changed over time. There are no "English" characters in Beowulf, and English scholars and authors had no knowledge of the poem before it was discovered and edited in the nineteenth century. Although written in the language called "Anglo-Saxon," the poem was claimed by Danish and German scholars as their earliest national epic before it came to be thought of as an "Old English" poem. One of the results of the Norman Conquest was that the structure and vocabulary of the English language changed to such an extent that Chaucer, even if he had come across a manuscript of Old English poetry, would have experienced far more difficulty construing the language than with medieval Latin, French, or Italian. If a King Arthur had actually lived, he would have spoken a Celtic language possibly still intelligible to native speakers of Middle Welsh but not to Middle English speakers.

The literary culture of the Middle Ages was far more international than national and was divided more by lines of class and audience than by language. Latin was the language of the Church and of learning. After the eleventh century, French became the dominant language of secular European literary culture. Edward, the Prince of Wales, who took the king of France prisoner at the battle of Poitiers in 1356, had culturally more in common with his royal captive than with the common people of England. And the legendary King Arthur was an international figure. Stories about him and his knights originated in Celtic poems and tales and were adapted and greatly expanded in Latin chronicles and French romances even before Arthur became an English hero.

Chaucer was certainly familiar with poetry that had its roots in the Old English period. He read popular romances in Middle English, most of which derive from more sophisticated French and Italian sources. But when he began writing in the 1360s and 1370s, he turned directly to French and Italian models as well as to classical poets (especially Ovid). English poets in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries looked upon Chaucer and his contemporary John Gower as founders of English literature, as those who made English a language fit for cultivated readers. In the Renaissance, Chaucer was referred to as the "English Homer." Spenser called him the "well of English undefiled."

Nevertheless, Chaucer and his contemporaries Gower, William Langland, and the Gawain poet — all writing in the latter third of the fourteenth century — are heirs to classical and medieval cultures that had been evolving for many centuries. Cultures is put in the plural deliberately, for there is a tendency, even on the part of medievalists, to think of the Middle Ages as a single culture epitomized by the Great Gothic cathedrals in which architecture, art, music, and liturgy seem to join in magnificent expressions of a unified faith — an approach one recent scholar has referred to as "cathedralism." Such a view overlooks the diversity of medieval cultures and the social, political, religious, economic, and technological changes that took place over this vastly long period.

The texts included here from "The Middle Ages" attempt to convey that diversity. They date from the sixth to the late- fifteenth century. Eight were originally in Old French, six in Latin, five in English, two in Old Saxon, two in Old Icelandic, and one each in Catalan, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic.

"The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf" demonstrates the kinship of the Anglo-Saxon poem with the versification and literature of other early branches of the Germanic language group. An Anglo-Saxon poet who was writing an epic based on the book of Genesis was able to insert into his work the episodes of the fall of the angels and the fall of man that he adapted with relatively minor changes from an Old Saxon poem thought to have been lost until a fragment from it was found late in the nineteenth century in the Vatican Library. Germanic mythology and legend preserved in Old Icelandic literature centuries later than Beowulf provide us with better insights into stories known to the poet than anything in ancient Greek and Roman epic poetry.

"Estates and Orders" samples ideas about medieval society and some of its members and institutions. Particular attention is given to religious orders and to the ascetic ideals that were supposed to rule the lives of men and women living in religious communities (such as Chaucer's Prioress, Monk, and Friar, who honor those rules more in the breach than in the observance) and anchorites (such as Julian of Norwich) living apart. The Rule of Saint Benedict, written for a sixth-century religious community, can serve the modern reader as a guidebook to the ideals and daily practices of monastic life. The mutual influence of those ideals and new aristocratic ideals of chivalry is evident in the selection from the Ancrene Riwle (Rule for Anchoresses, NAEL 8, [1.157–159]) and The Book of the Order of Chivalry.

Though medieval social theory has little to say about women, women were sometimes treated satirically as if they constituted their own estate and profession in rebellion against the divinely ordained rule of men. An outstanding instance is the "Old Woman" from the Romance of the Rose, whom Chaucer reinvented as the Wife of Bath. The tenth-century English Benedictine monk Aelfric gives one of the earliest formulations of the theory of three estates — clergy, nobles, and commoners — working harmoniously together. But the deep- seated resentment between the upper and lower estates flared up dramatically in the Uprising of 1381 and is revealed by the slogans of the rebels, which are cited here in selections from the chronicles of Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham, and by the attack of the poet John Gower on the rebels in his Vox Clamantis. In the late-medieval genre of estates satire, all three estates are portrayed as selfishly corrupting and disrupting a mythical social order believed to have prevailed in a past happier age.

The selections under "Arthur and Gawain" trace how French writers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries transformed the Legendary Histories of Britain (NAEL 8 , 1.117–128) into the narrative genre that we now call "romance." The works of Chrétien de Troyes focus on the adventures of individual knights of the Round Table and how those adventures impinge upon the cult of chivalry. Such adventures often take the form of a quest to achieve honor or what Sir Thomas Malory often refers to as "worship." But in romance the adventurous quest is often entangled, for better or for worse, with personal fulfillment of love for a lady — achieving her love, protecting her honor, and, in rare cases such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, resisting a lady's advances. In the thirteenth century, clerics turned the sagas of Arthur and his knights — especially Sir Lancelot — into immensely long prose romances that disparaged worldly chivalry and the love of women and advocated spiritual chivalry and sexual purity. These were the "French books" that Malory, as his editor and printer William Caxton tells us, "abridged into English," and gave them the definitive form from which Arthurian literature has survived in poetry, prose, art, and film into modern times.

"The First Crusade," launched in 1096, was the first in a series of holy wars that profoundly affected the ideology and culture of Christian Europe. Preached by Pope Urban II, the aim of the crusade was to unite warring Christian factions in the common goal of liberating the Holy Land from its Moslem rulers. The chronicle of Robert the Monk is one of several versions of Urban's address. The Hebrew chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan gives a moving account of attacks made by some of the crusaders on Jewish communities in the Rhineland — the beginnings of the persecution of European Jews in the later Middle Ages. In the biography of her father, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I, the princess Anna Comnena provides us with still another perspective of the leaders of the First Crusade whom she met on their passage through Constantinople en route to the Holy Land. The taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders came to be celebrated by European writers of history and epic poetry as one of the greatest heroic achievements of all times. The accounts by the Arab historian Ibn Al-Athir and by William of Tyre tell us what happened after the crusaders breached the walls of Jerusalem from complementary but very different points of view.

Spring Syllabus -- British Literature

British Literature Spring Semester Syllabus

	Literature Reading Assignment Due this Week	Writing Assignment Due this Week
Week 1 (1/17)	Brief timeline of British History; Introduce Everyman
Week 2 (1/25)	Discuss Everyman; Introduce Much Ado About Nothing	Brief answers to study guide questions
Week 3 (1/31)	Discuss Much Ado About Nothing	Language & Art
Week 4 (2/7)	Discuss Much Ado About Nothing	Essay Exam
Week 5 (2/14)	Discuss Poetry (Romantic & Metaphysical Poets)
Week 6 (2/21)	Discuss Poetry (Victorian Poets) Introduce Great Expectations	Poetry Comparisons
Week 7 (3/6)	Discuss Great Expectations	Character Analysis
No CHAT (2/28)
Week 8 (3/13)	Discuss Great Expectations	Plot Analysis
Week 9 (3/20)	Discuss Great Expectations	Essay Exam
Week 10 (3/27)	Panel Discussion:  Independent Reading
No CHAT (4/3)
Week 11 (4/10)	Panel Discussion:  Independent Reading	Independent Reading Rough Draft
Week 12 (4/17)	Panel Discussion:  Independent Reading Introduce Pygmalion
Week 13 (4/24)	Discuss Pygmalion	Independent Reading Final Copy Theme Analysis
Week 14 (5/1)	Discuss Pygmalion	Essay Exam
Week 15 (5/8)	Final Discussions & Review