WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY
• To make herself feel better about the situation.
• To vent her outrage at what has happened.
• To make sense of the extraordinary behaviour on his part. On the news of Arnoldo’s capture, she wants:
• To work out the rights and wrongs of her bringing about his death because he won’t have her.
• To do the right thing – her honour and higher self win the day as she rushes off to save him.
Hippolyta
To be forc’d to woo,
Being a woman, could not but torment me;
But bringing for my advocates youth and beauty,
Set off with wealth – and then to be denied too,
Does comprehend all tortures. They flatter’d me
That said my looks were charms, my touches fetters,
My locks soft chains to bind the arms of princes
And make them in that wish’d-for bondage happy.
I am like others of a coarser feature,
As weak to allure, but in my dotage stronger.
I am no Circe; he, more than Ulysses,
Scorns all my offer’d bounties, slights my favours,
And, as I were some new Egyptian, flies me,
Leaving no pawn but my own shame behind him.
But he shall find that in my fell revenge
I am a woman, one that never pardons
The rude contemner of her proffer’d sweetness. [ . . . ]
Is that the means to quench the scorching heat
Of my enrag’d desires? Must innocence suffer
’Cause I am faulty? Or is my love so fatal
That of necessity it must destroy
The object it most longs for? Dull Hippolyta,
To think that injuries could make way for love
When courtesies were despis’d; that by his death
Thou shouldst gain that which only thou canst hope for
While he is living. My honour’s at the stake now,
And cannot be preserv’d unless he perish.
The enjoying of the thing I love I ever
Have priz’d above my fame: why doubt I now, then?
One only way is left me to redeem all. –
Make ready my caroche.
GLOSSARY
comprehend incorporate
Circe pronounced ‘sursee’, the legendary sorceress who bewitched . . .
Ulysses (alias Odysseus), whose crew washed up on her shores
Egyptian i.e. Queen Dido of Carthage, abandoned by Aeneas
dull dim, obtuse, stupid
caroche coach
The Changeling
Thomas Middleton and William Rowley (1622)
WHO Beatrice, daughter of the Governor of the Castle of Alicante, Spain.
WHERE In her new husband’s bedchamber.
TO WHOM Herself and the audience; it is a soliloquy but much of it is discovery as well as communication.
WHEN Contemporary with authorship.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Beatrice was betrothed initially to Alonso, but fell deeply in love with the nobleman Alsemero. In desperation she hired her father’s servant DeFlores, a man she finds physically repulsive, to kill Alonso. The deal was she would offer her virginity to him as payment, or he would reveal her to be complicit in the murder. She had no option but to submit. Today she has married Alsemero but she is dreading the wedding night, not least because of what she finds when looking around his closet whilst he is out.
WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY
• To berate herself for being ‘undone’.
• To let the audience know of her genuine distress, and her fears of being discovered. She had no idea he had all these potions to detect virginity. She was feeling terrible enough before discovering the closet, and afterwards feels desperate.
Beatrice
This fellow has undone me endlessly:
Never was bride so fearfully distress’d.
The more I think upon th’ ensuing night,
And whom I am to cope with in embraces –
One that’s ennobled both in blood and mind,
So clear in understanding (that’s my plague now),
Before whose judgement will my fault
appear Like malefactors’ crimes before tribunals
(There is no hiding on’t) – the more I dive
Into my own distress. How a wise man
Stands for a great calamity! There’s no venturing
Into his bed, what course soe’er I light upon,
Without my shame, which may grow up to danger.
He cannot but in justice strangle me
As I lie by him, as a cheater use me;
’Tis a precious craft to play with a false die
Before a cunning gamester. Here’s his closet,
The key left in’t, and he abroad i’ th’ park;
Sure ’twas forgot, I’ll be so bold as look in’t.
Opens closet.
Bless me! A right physician’s closet ’tis,
Set round with vials, every one her mark too.
Sure he does practise physic for his own use,
Which may be safely call’d your great man’s wisdom.
What manuscript lies here? ‘The Book of Experiment,
Call’d Secrets in Nature’; so ’tis, ’tis so;
‘How to know whether a woman be with child or no’.
I hope I am not yet; if he should try though!
Let me see – folio forty-five. Here ’tis;
The leaf tucked down upon’t, the place suspicious.
‘If you would know whether a woman be with child or not,
give her two spoonfuls of the white water in the glass C –’
Where’s that glass C? Oh yonder I see it now,
‘And if she be with child, she sleeps full twelve hours after,
if not, not.’
None of that water comes into my belly.
I’ll know you from a hundred; I could break you now,
Or turn you into milk, and so beguile
The master of the mystery, but I’ll look to you.
Ha! That which is next is ten times worse:
‘How to know whether a woman be a maid or not’.
If that should be applied, what would become of me?
Belike he has a strong faith of my purity,
That never yet made proof; but this he calls
‘A merry sleight, but true experiment, the author Antonius
Mizaldus. Give the party you suspect the quantity of a
spoonful of the water in the glass M, which upon her that is
a maid makes three several effects: ’twill make her
incontinently gape, then fall into a sudden sneezing, last into
a violent laughing; else dull, heavy, and lumpish.’
Where had I been?
I fear it, yet ’tis several hours to bedtime.
GLOSSARY
fellow (1) base knave; (2) partner
cope with (1) fight with; (2) copulate with
stands for represents
die a single dice
right true
vials small flasks
physic medicine
folio page
belike probably
made proof successfully tested
sleight trick
incontinently gape stare, as if paralysed
lumpish dull of spirit
The Devil’s Law-Case
John Webster (1623)
WHO Leonora, mother of Romelio and Jolenta. Late 30s/40.
WHERE In Leonora’s home, Naples.
TO WHOM The audience: it is a soliloquy.
WHEN Contemporary with authorship.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Contarino had been near fatally wounded in a duel – he was fighting for the right to marry Jolenta, who had been set up to marry his rival, Ercole, by her brother Romelio and her mother Leonora. Romelio had gone to tend Contarino on his s
ick bed, prompted to bring him back to health by Leonora, but learning that the wealthy Contarino had left a will leaving everything to Jolenta should he die, he changes tack to hasten his end, by stabbing him to death. He has just told Leonora of the murder. But what was unknown by anyone was that Leonora was deeply in love with Contarino. She had supported the Ercole match expressly to free Contarino for her own use. Deluded, she had believed that the love was mutual, if unvoiced, and it would flower after Jolenta’s marriage to another.
WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY
• To voice her horror at this turn of events: the sending of her own son to tend to Contarino, leading directly to his murder.
• To not live any longer in this world.
• To express, for the first time aloud, the sheer depth of her love for him and the logic of this love for a much younger man, to get the audience to understand the simplicity and purity of real love that overrides all barriers.
• To torment herself with recriminations.
• To denounce Romelio as a son, he is nothing to her now. Her hatred of him is warrior-like as she draws inspiration from the female Amazonians who would remove a breast in order to draw a bow across their chest more efficiently and so shoot more accurately.
Leonora
Never was woe like mine: O that my care
And absolute study to preserve his life,
Should be his absolute ruin! Is he gone then?
There is no plague i’th’world can be compar’d
To impossible desire, for they are plagued
In the desire itself: never, O never
Shall I behold him living, in whose life
I liv’d far sweetlier than in mine own.
A precise curiosity has undone me: why did I not
Make my love known directly? ’T had not been
Beyond example, for a matron to affect
I’th’honourable way of marriage,
So youthful a person. O I shall run mad:
For as we love our youngest children best,
So the last fruit of our affection,
Wherever we bestow it, is most strong,
Most violent, most unresistible,
Since ’tis indeed our latest harvest-home,
Last merriment ’fore winter. And we widows,
As men report of our best picture makers,
We love the piece we are in hand with better
Than all the excellent work we have done before:
And my son has depriv’d me of all this. Ha, my son!
I’ll be a fury to him; like an Amazon lady,
I’d cut off this right pap, that gave him suck,
To shoot him dead. I’ll no more tender him,
Than had a wolf stol’n to my teat i’ th’ night,
And robb’d me of my milk: nay, such a creature
I should love better far. – Ha, ha, what say you?
I do talk to somewhat, methinks: it may be
My evil genius. Do not the bells ring?
I have a strange noise in my head. O, fly in pieces!
Come age, and wither me into the malice
Of those that have been happy; let me have
One more property more than the Devil of Hell,
Let me envy the pleasure of youth heartily,
Let me in this life fear no kind of ill,
That have no good to hope for: let me die
In the distraction of that worthy princess,
Who loathèd food, and sleep, and ceremony,
For thought of losing that brave gentleman,
She would fain have sav’d, had not a false conveyance
Express’d him stubborn-hearted. Let me sink
Where neither man, nor memory may ever find me.
GLOSSARY
precise curiosity over-elaborate scrupulousness
last merriment ’fore winter final fling before old age
in hand with currently working on
conveyance communication
A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Philip Massinger (1625)
WHO Lady Alworth. A rich middle-aged widow. 40s.
WHERE Lady Alworth’s home, in the North of England.
TO WHOM Lovell, an English Lord.
WHEN Contemporary with authorship.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Lovell has decided to marry Margaret, the beautiful daughter of the overt social climber, Sir Giles Overreach. Or so everyone thinks. Actually he and Margaret have agreed to string everyone along, not least to allow her relationship with Alworth, the stepson of Lady Alworth, to develop. Alworth has been acting as ‘go-between’. Here, Lady Alworth, who has been supporting her stepson in his chosen love match, is trying to show Lovell that it is not appropriate for him to marry Margaret. Not least because her father, Overreach, has just been exposed as a money-grabbing fraud. Also, she rather likes Lovell herself. But Lovell thought Lady Alworth was being wooed, and had accepted Welborne’s advances. She has not – and puts him right on that point. Welborne, a ‘prodigal’, is cut of the same cloth as Overreach and has been chancing it pursuing her. (Overreach, persuaded of a potential ‘match’ between Welborne and the Lady, has told Welborne that he can secure her lands for him, and she has found this out).
WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY
• To get him to release Margaret from the engagement.
• To reveal her respect and liking for him, so their courtship might have a chance to begin.
• To impress him linguistically, intellectually and as an equal.
• To remind Lovell that he is a member of the aristocracy – like herself – and does not come from ‘new money’ in the vulgar way that those like Sir Giles Overreach do.
Lady Alworth
Now my good lord; if I may use my freedom,
As to an honour’d friend –
[LOVELL. You lessen else
Your favour to me.]
I dare then say thus:
As you are noble (howe’er common men
Make sordid wealth the object and sole end
Of their industrious aims), ’twill not agree
With those of eminent blood (who are engag’d
More to prefer their honours than to increase
The state left to ’em by their ancestors)
To study large additions in their fortunes
And quite neglect their births: though I must grant
Riches well got to be a useful servant,
But a bad master.
[LOVELL Madam, ’tis confess’d;
But what infer you from it?]
This, my lord,
That as all wrongs, though thrust into one scale
Slide of themselves off when right fills the other,
And cannot bide the trial: so all wealth
(I mean if ill acquired), cemented to honour
By virtuous ways achiev’d, and bravely purchas’d,
Is but as rubbish pour’d into a river
(Howe’er intended to make good the bank),
Rend’ring the water that was pure before,
Polluted, and unwholesome. I allow
The heir of St Giles Overreach, Margaret,
A maid well qualified, and the richest match
Our north part can make boast of: yet she cannot
With all that she brings with her fill their mouths,
That never will forget who was her father;
Or that my husband Alworth’s lands, and Welborne’s
(How wrung from both needs now no repetition)
Were real motive, that more work’d your lordship
To join your families, than her form, and virtues;
You may conceive the rest.
GLOSSARY
state estate
grant concede
thrust into one scale loaded onto one side of a set of scales
allow concede
conceive readily supply
French and Spanish Golden Age
The golden e
ra of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama was matched by a similarly rich Golden Age on the continent.
Spain was a country only recently defeated in war – and this had a notable effect on the writing of the time. It was nationalistic, principled and preoccupied with conduct, morality and integrity.
In Catholic France, actors were social outcasts, even denied a Christian burial. But its accomplishments between 1630 and 1680 lifted French theatre to an unrivalled pre-eminence in Europe, and kept it there throughout the eighteenth century. The comedies deal broadly with urban hypocrisy and smalltime domestic villainy, drawing from the physical comedy and stereotypes of the Commedia dell’Arte. Rather than provoking belly laughs, these comedies, especially Molière’s, are described by one contemporary critic as ‘rire dans l’âme’ – or laughter in the soul.
The tragedies also deal with archetypes but on a grander scale, with the epic and timeless issues that underpin the very lives and aspirations of the pre-Republic French: honour, truth and faithfulness to the ruler. Many of the plots go back to Greek drama for inspiration, and the genre is truly neo-classical in its aspiration. Unlike Molière’s verse, Racine’s is lofty, grand and morally elevating, in both tone and form.
Like much of the English work, this period of European writing was characterised by a particularly vivid – almost physical – lyricism, a poetic language. Much of the verse was written in rhyming couplets. Today, this form carries little weight in the theatre and is best encountered in pantomimes or Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. In Golden Age France and Spain, the couplet carried the linguistic and emotional weight of the iambic pentameter, and shouldn’t be ignored.
Peribanez
Lope De Vega (1605–12), adapt. Tanya Ronder
WHO Casilda, wife to Peribanez, a farmer.
WHERE A wedding party celebration in the marital home in Ocana in the province of Toledo, Spain.
TO WHOM Her brand new – as of a few minutes – husband. In the company of wedding guests and family including the priest, Casilda’s uncle.
Classical Monologues for Women Page 7