Women Beware Women

While my Major Field is History of Text Technologies, my minor day will focus on the literature and culture of "Renaissance" England. It still bothers me slightly to use the term "Renaissance" after so many years of "Early Modern," but hey, that's what was on the little drop-down menu for selecting minors, and it sounded nifty. That, and since my interests focus mainly in the sixteenth and *very early* seventeenth centuries, for publishing, it made sense.

As such, they expect me to have actually well, *read* some of this literature. I'm solving parts of this problem by teaching a number of texts in my Women in Literature course this summer, but you can only make undergrads read so much of your list. More's the pity.

I may find a way to work Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women into a syllabus at some point. I saw this tragedy performed at the National Theatre when I was in London. The production was spectacular, and I think it distinctly colors my later rereading of the play.

Synopsis:
The critical character in the play is Livia, a twice-widowed noblewoman. Her scheming and manipulation fuels much of the plot, as she arranges relationships around her as though manipulating chess pieces on a board. The chess metaphor is blatant at the end of the second act, and productions tend to play it up to varying degrees. The production I saw did it subtly, with a conquered floor in the part of the set used for Livia's house, which also functioned as much of the main playing space.

Besides Livia, there is her niece Isabella, and Isabella's uncle / Livia's brother Hippolito. The audience quickly learns that Hippolito is in love with his niece, an anguishing experience for this otherwise upstanding man. When he confesses this to Isabella, she rejects him in horror. Meanwhile, Isabella is also dealing with her betrothal to an absolute idiot, called the Ward. Isabella is given some rather choice lines on the horribleness of arranged marriages, "Men buy their slaves, but women buuy their masters" being one of the best (1.2.178). The Ward is a rich fool, and the match is arranged between her father and the Ward's guardian ... Guardiano. Middleton gets around the utter inanity of that name by having no one speak it, except maybe the Ward (and he mangles it to "Guardianer").

Guardiano is evil. At the National he was played by Andrew Woodall with an avuncular malevolence which sneaks up on you, to devastating effect. You want to like him in his first few scenes, as he arranges his Idiot's wedding, but it becomes clear that he has utterly failed the Ward in raising him. And it becomes increasingly clear that he serves his Duke in other ways, most closely as a procurer. The Duke is known for his wicked ways, which apparently involve much wenching (and worrying on the part of his Cardinal brother).

There's a final important pair, a young married couple named Bianca and Leantio. Leantio has just stolen the noble Bianca from her rich parents, secretly married her, and the play opens with her introduction to his Mother. Leantio's terrified that someone will steal his new bride away, and attempts to keep her locked in the family home. Given that set up, of course the Duke sees her during a procession in the first Act.

Whew. Ok -- so how does Livia work her "magic"? She convinces Isabella that her mother slept with a famous Spaniard, thus Isabella's uncle isn't really her uncle. Isabella agrees to marry Adam Sandler's ancestor to facilitate her proposed adultery with her beloved-"not"-Uncle.

Guardiano has Livia invite Leantio's mother over for a game of chess; while they play, Guardiano proposes to show Bianca Livia's art. She finds some rather "lively" art indeed -- the Duke is waiting in an upper gallery, where he proceeds to rape the young bride. Leanto's Mother loses the game. Coming back down stairs, Bianca comes to terms with her new state as a fallen woman. Her reasoning is a bit baffling without some background in EM ideas of purity, but she decides to become the Duke's mistress -- not many other options are left to her.

In the third act, the Duke throws a banquet, and invites Bianca. This is when Leantio discovers she's no longer his sweet young bride. The Banquet is ostensibly so that the Ward may "meet" Isabella (although she's seen him already). She is put through her paces (singing, dancing -- with her Uncle), and then the Ward has a dance with her. At the National, this was pure comic slapstic -- her dance with her uncle was beautiful, and the Ward's utterly painful to watch. Meanwhile, the banquet has thrown a kink in Livia's plans. She's fallen in love. At the ripe "old" age of 39, she falls for Leantio. She provides him an "out" from the Duke's galling offer; he'll avoid the job offered by his cuckold and take the "job" of house-boy for this rich widow. The production I saw had him outfitted in a pewter silk suit for the second half of the show. It was ostentatious.

What could go wrong, you say? Everyone's paired up you say? Well, Leantio can't leave Bianca alone. At the beginning of the fourth act, he comes by to "gloat" - in a really sad way - about his new position as kept-boy. Unfortunately, the Duke sees him, and it occurs to the Duke that if he can kill off Hubby, he can legally marry his mistress, which would conveniently get his sermonizing brother the Cardinal off his back. So he arranges a hit on Leantio, by telling Hippolito that his sister is doing the pool boy, so to speak.

Killing Leantio unravels everything. Livia, broken hearted, informs Isabella (and her enfianced) that she's been sleeping with her Uncle. After this outburst and it's fall-out, it comes to light that the Duke used Hippolito when his hasty marriage becomes known. The family "makes up" and plot to hurt the Duke by throwing a masked Ball in "honor" of his nuptuals. Isabella and Hippolito don't realize how very hurt Livia is, however. She fully intends to kill *everybody*.

At the wedding of Bianca and the Duke, the Cardinal attempts to interrupt things. He thinks Bianca is unfit for lawful marriage, having been a mistress. Bianca and the Cardinal banter about religion, the Duke marries her anyways.

The rest of the play consists of an elaborate masque, which as the National Theatre presented it was a whirling mass of death. I haven't seen a better orchestrated fight sequence (on a revolving stage!) since the Kill Bill movies. Bianca prepares a poisoned cup for the Cardinal, but the Duke ends up drinking it. According to the stage directions, Isabella dies from "flaming fold" thrown in her lap -- the production simplified this into strangling. Guardiano falls through a trap door, as if to hell. In the production, Livia was killed twice: the first time, one of her servants dressed as her is accidentally killed in her place. It seems the stage directions only require once, though. Hippolito is shot (but fights on for a number of lines). Bianca finally kills herself, drinking from the same poisoned cup that kills the Duke.

The Cardinal is left Last Man Standing, and is able to deliver a moralizing bit on Sin. It's only four lines long though, so it doesn't impede too heavily on the bloodbath you've just witnessed.

I don't know exactly how I'd teach this yet. I think pairing it with R&J would be fantastic, actually, given the number of star-crossed lovers and how delightfully raunchy it is. It has some really good points about the things women do *to women* which can be a nice balance for a Women In Literature course, which has the unfortunate tendency to veer towards victimology as students overly simplify complex historical situations. And it's just a fun play, with more bufooning than one expects in a bloody revenge tragedy, mixed with some actual sweet emotions from characters like Livia, who in a simpler play would be purely evil.