Shakespeare on the Edge: Border-Crossing in the Tragedies and the Henriad Book

Hopkins persuasively demonstrates the ways that Shakespeare's later history plays and great tragedies use tropes of borders and edges to wrestle with some of the socio-political anxieties (national identity, female power, anti-Catholicism) prevalent during the transition from Elizabethan to Jacobean England. On the whole, persuasive, but Hopkins examples of similar themes in Shakespeare's contemporaries left me only partially convinced--I couldn't tell whether her examples truly demonstrated the breadth of discourse she meant them to, or if she'd just cherry-picked a few most synchronous examples from a much more heterogeneous body of plays.

This is Sir John Falstaff's play; it was a chance for Shakespeare to pad out one of his most popular characters and give him another comic moment. And he failed completely.

So when Shakespeare wrote this he focused on this one character, and as a result the rest of the play suffered. The cast were all mere plot devices, a means for Falstaff to arrive at his destination (the dénouement) in the woods wearing his antlers. They don't seem to have the same level of personality or depth that is often attributed to Shakespeare's characters. The wives of Windsor are rather absent for most of the play, surprisingly. Falstaff's wooing of them had very little stage time. We see the letter he sent to them both, but little else. As you can probably tell, I didn't really this. I have very few good things to say about it if any.

Scholars argue that there is much of Shakespeare in this play. Indeed, things such as his application for a coat of arms in his personal life, his desire to move up the social ladder and his love of Ovid's works. But this is also true for many of Shakespeare's plays. For example, the rape scene in Titus Andronicus is lifted form Ovid. Not a bad thing of course, but I don't think it's enough to make this play worthy of note. Shakespeare was an entertainer, and this is one of his least entertaining plays. The fact that he adapted parts of Ovid doesn't change this.

It's also one of his least popular plays, and I really can see why. The plot was rather dull and most of it was in prose rather than verse, so it wasn't overly pleasant to read either. This isn't a play I will read again in the future.

Next on my Shakespeare list is A Midsummer's Night Dream. I'm looking forward to reading it, hopefully it will make me forget about this one!