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Tag Archives: Shakespeare

Mangled Shakespeare: Beatrice and Benedick

21 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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historical fiction, Italy, Marina Fiorato, Messina, Much Ado about Nothing, Othello, Philip II, Romeo and Juliet, sexual mores, Shakespeare, Sicily, sixteenth century, Spain, Spanish Armada, Verona

Review: Beatrice and Benedick, by Marina Fiorato
St. Martin’s, 2014. 431 pp. $28

Beatrice, a young woman from Verona, is walking her cousin’s estate in Sicily when she sees a Moor making love to a white woman who wears an identical wedding band to his. Though at first surprised that interracial marriage is even possible, Beatrice comes away wanting a husband too, especially one who’ll desire her so powerfully. As it happens, her uncle is about to play host to Spanish noblemen representing the power that rules Sicily; joining them are Benedick and Claudio, merchants’ sons from Padua and Florence, respectively. Beatrice and Benedick fall for each other on sight, while Claudio cozies up to her cousin, Hero.

According to legend, this balcony was where Juliet entranced Romeo (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, undated)

According to legend, this balcony in Verona was where Juliet entranced Romeo (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, undated)

Readers familiar with Much Ado about Nothing will recognize this setup as backstory for Shakespeare’s comedy. Maybe you’ve also identified the passionate couple on the beach as Othello and Desdemona. And when you hear that Beatrice’s older brother is named Teobaldo (aka Tybalt), and that a feud between the Montecchi and Capuletti families is tearing apart Verona, you’ll know to keep an eye peeled for Romeo and Giulietta.

This bold contrivance promises a rollicking story and a bushel of grand themes: jealousy, the nature of love, the sexual double standard, how appearances deceive, split loyalties, and so forth. But Beatrice and Benedick falters from the get-go, and the narrative seldom rises above what feels ordained. It’s never easy to create tension in a well-known story, but Fiorato tries by adding plot rather than by deepening her characters. That’s a mistake.

The trouble begins with her premise, which supposes that Shakespeare was Sicilian. I might accept that notion for the two hours’ traffic of her stage if she portrayed him as a rising poet and dramatist, a charismatic figure caught up in his verse. But her ink-stained scribbler’s capacity for invention takes a distant third behind the terrible wrongs done him and his thirst for revenge. He claims the mantle of authorship solely by spouting words that have since become famous, which prompts either a wink-wink, nudge-nudge or uneasy laughter. Worse, Beatrice and Benedick quote random snippets from Guess Who and even pen sonnets from the same source. You too can write great literature in your spare time, without any practice at all!

This implausible conceit would matter a lot less if the characters, especially the men, amounted to more than a collection of attitudes, locked in place for an obvious purpose. Benedick, aside from his looks and ability with a rapier (how he learned is never adequately explained), has little to recommend him, and his pride, ideas about women, and approach to life seem handed to him rather than born from within. As the wheels turn, you sense that he’s got a long journey to make, and much ado about transforming himself, before the final drama with Beatrice takes place.

Moreover, for no good reason, he immediately embraces as great friend Don Pedro, a Spanish nobleman who wears villainy barely concealed below his charm. Yet it takes Benedick, supposedly a perceptive fellow, a very long time to get the message. Further, he does so while serving Don Pedro aboard ship in the Spanish Armada, a nod to the political theme. But the conflict between Don Pedro and Benedick could unfold anywhere, and burdening the narrative with yet another epic story–one with an inevitable ending–is too much. Maybe more to the point, Fiorato’s narrative seems to lose its moorings at sea, while it’s far more authoritative at the Spanish court, where, for example, King Philip II keeps a red-headed dwarf as a caricature of England’s Queen Elizabeth. What a fabulous scene, full of tension from unexpected undercurrents.

That leaves it up to Beatrice to save this hodgepodge, but she can’t. How she got to be so independent-minded, capable with a sword, or virtually oblivious of sex until watching Othello and Desdemona are only some of the questions I have. Her conversion to ardent feminism feels unnecessarily earnest, maybe because she doesn’t have that far to travel. Further, I’m not clear how a woman who holds feminist views (and knows how to defend herself physically) surrenders so meekly to her tyrannical father. One such surrender, however, provides what I think is the author’s best scene. Before male witnesses, a doctor brusquely examines Beatrice to prove her virginity so that a marriage contract may be drawn up. Nothing speaks more eloquently than this humiliating, abusive act, which needs no further commentary. I wish the rest of Beatrice and Benedick had shown the same directness and economy.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The Grandeur That May (Or May Not) Have Been: SPQR

01 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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ancient Rome, Augustus, empire, Julius Caesar, Latin, Mary Beard, misconceptions, republic, Roman politics, Shakespeare, why Rome matters

Review: SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard
Liveright/Norton, 2015. 536 pp. $35

I’ve been waiting for this book from the library for quite a while, and I’m happy to say it’s magnificent (from Latin, magnificare, “to magnify”). Lately, I’ve been trying to learn Latin, which involves chores like repeating, ad infinitum, the ablative ending in the imperfect tense, but also treats, like deciphering snippets of Julius Caesar’s account of the Gauls. SPQR reminds me why I bother, and why Rome matters, even for people who would never get within a mile of a Latin grammar.

But if you venture here–and I heartily recommend that you do–be prepared to abandon preconceived ideas. “Rome,” as Beard declares early on, “was not simply the thuggish younger sibling of classical Greece,” devoted to engineering, war, and moral absolutes, whereas the Greeks favored intellectual inquiry, theater, and democracy. Morever, she notes, praise for Greece at Roman expense began with the Romans themselves; throughout SPQR, she quotes skeptics who criticized laws, common behavior, military misadventures, garish buildings, or corruption. So much for absolutes.

The so-called Prima Porta statue of the Emperor Augustus, 1st century CE, now in the Vatican. Note the martial attire and the baby, probably an image of Romulus, the city's legendary founder (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

The so-called Prima Porta statue of the Emperor Augustus, 1st century CE, now in the Vatican. Note the martial attire and the baby, probably an image of Romulus, the city’s legendary founder (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

SPQR is the acronym for Senatus PopulusQue Romanus (“the senate and the Roman people”), the motto of the republic that the empire largely ignored. However, if the senate in imperial times ceased to be a legislature, in a typical delightful passage, Beard argues that it still had a function:

Senators were essential to the running of the empire. Among their number were most of the emperor’s friends, advisors, confidants, dinner guests and drinking partners–as well as the men who, second only to his own family, were likely to become his successful rivals, vociferous opponents and assassins.

She also corrects or casts doubt on many stories handed down over generations. Apparently, the dying Julius Caesar did not say, “Et tu, Brute,” as Shakespeare has it, but admonished Brutus in Greek, perhaps calling him a child. (The meaning is ambiguous.) Nor was Brutus “the noblest Roman of them all,” having left a trail of murder and extortion as governor of Cyprus. Was the Emperor Claudius the just, forward-thinking, moderate ruler Robert Graves portrays in his marvelous novels? Not if you include the executions of thirty-odd senators and a dice habit for which Claudius had his carriage rebuilt so he could play while on the move. Did Nero really make his horse a senator? Probably not.

A more nuanced portrait emerges in these pages. Despite xenophobia, which could be extreme, Rome expanded the definition of citizenship well beyond the Greek model to include not only residents of lands far outside the city but, by 212 CE, thirty million others living in provinces throughout the empire. Like all ancient cultures, the Romans took slaves, but they also freed many, an unusual policy that drew admiring commentary from contemporaries, an explanation of how the Romans insured political loyalty in their vast empire. Under the republic, a system of checks and balances among the senate, the consuls who had monarchical powers, and the common folk assured that no one force would always have the upper hand–at least, according to Polybius, the astute Greek historian who lived in Rome. Once an adult woman’s father died, she could own property, buy or sell, inherit, make a will, or free slaves, legal rights that compare favorably with those of any Englishwoman before 1870.

But Beard insists that Roman accomplishments or failures aren’t what make its history worth knowing and discussing. Their legacy, she says, goes far beyond political structures, art, famous public works, literature, or philosophical ideas. It’s that they talked about the same issues we do, so much so that the questions they asked sound as if they were taken from today’s headlines.

For instance, despite severe income inequality and upper-class snobbery toward the poor, under the republic, politicians spent large sums courting lower-class voters. They also honed rhetorical techniques to win them over at public meetings called contiones, said to be noisy, stormy occasions. That in itself raises comparisons to our political system, but there’s more. At one such contio, around 125 BCE, the hot issue was whether to grant citizenship to the Latin tribes outside the city. Beard quotes one opponent haranguing the crowd, “‘I mean, do you think there will be any space for you, like there is now, in a contio or at games or festivals? Don’t you realise they’ll take over everything?’”

Beard has convinced me. To consider Roman history means to reflect on our own problems.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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