The Dark Lady

We have met a couple of Shakespeare’s dark ladies, but I have a perverse curiosity to poke around the private world of The Dark Lady of his sonnets.  In Sonnet 144, the speaker compares his fair male companion, “the better angel,” to the “worser spirit a woman colour’d ill” who “tempteth my better angel from my side.” Those are some pretty damning words for the dark seductress the speaker spends 28 poems in heated obsession over.  The poet squeezed like a vice between unadulterated love and the corruptive enticement of lustful desire. The speaker goes on to say in Sonnet 147  that he thought this dark, erotic temptress was good, but is actually “as black as hell, as dark as night.”  An infidelity theme resonates again as he insists that she lies to him and is unfaithful, He asks, “But wherefore says she not she is unjust?”  Ironically, it is he who is consumed by his love for her, and it is she who has him by the noose.  In Sonnet 145, the Dark Lady, “Breathed forth the sound that said 'I hate' /To me that languish'd for her sake,” and only correct herself to add “not you” when she saw how distraught he was.  The man is whipped by a woman; a woman whose role is to be subservient.  Does he have a shrew for a lover? Is he so beguiled by her womanly powers, her powerful dark forces that have the ability to control the moon?  She is not so fair, she is so dark.  So dark, so deep that he cannot wield the upper hand.  It is nice to see that not every female was not either beaten into docility or burned at the stake. 

The Perfect Woman is a Young Man

We close this semester with Shakespeare’s love poems, first by reading  Sonnet 18 in isolation (examining it’s rhythm and structure) and then reading Sonnet 18,19,and 20 as a sequential set, cognizant of using a Queer theory model as a prism for understanding their meanings. Reading Sonnet 18 by itself conjures images of the fairest of maidens (who look something of the like of Juliet), an incandescent breath of youth who stimulates the poet to want to immortalize her with his verse.  It is a beautiful, sweet, romantic (bordering on sappy) poem, and one that reminds us that everything is ephemeral. It makes sense that the speaker in the poem is addressing a woman, as   In Sonnet 19,  the poet protests about the ravages of Time before presenting the ultimate bargain: that the poet’s “my love,” a he, be spared of its atrophying effects so that his ideal beauty may be beheld by future generations (“For beauty's pattern to succeeding men” (19.12)).  From a modern perspective, this strikes odd (aside from the implication that this poem is inherently “queer”) since today we tend to revere woman’s beauty, not men’s. Furthermore, woman were as—if not more—objectified in Elizabethan society, since, as scholar Caroll Camden wrote, “[for] it appears to be the order of nature that what is lacking in one sex is supplied in the other, and since man is endowed with wit, judgement, and a mind almost divine,[...] woman is given bodily beauty that she may be superior to man in this respect.”  Well, in Sonnet 19, it is a young man’s beauty that is valued, leaving the poor maidens in the shadows of passivity and invisibility. 



 In Sonnet 20, the poet describes in the “master-mistress of my passion” who is has a face as lovely as a woman and her gentle heart, although in fickle like a woman is prone to be.  Whoa—wait a minute!  How could an Elizabethan woman be fickle when her ultimately—and, really, only—duty is to be constant, to remain dutiful to her master (whether it be her husband or her father)?  Obviously, nothing was pure, and to mention female infidelity means it did happen, or, at the very least, was feared.  It is very interesting to hear this young man, perfect in every way except for been equipped with male genitalia, objectified in the way that one would associate with a woman.  Whether this object of the male’s gaze is a friend or lover, the writing expresses that his love for him is deeper and more genuine than he could want with a woman. 

Ah, the perfect Elizabethan is a young man. 

Lady Macbeth Revisited: A Modern Witch

Since frolicking in the memory of the despicable likes of Sycorax, a woman who represents the epitome of the basest form of womanhood, I cannot help but recall Kate Fleetwood’s depiction of Lady Macbeth in the PBS production.  If ever there was a representation of woman it is she:  Fleetwood’s Lady Macbeth was internally bloodless, her savageness shown in the image in which drenched with Duncan’s blood.     Both Sycorax and Lady Macbeth are brutal and power-hungry.  Lady Macbeth’s ambitious will to power is obvious, but in what way is Sycorax power-hunger, one might wonder?   Prospero references Sycorax’s “grand hests,” and “abhorred commands,”  of which Ariel refused and was imprisoned for having been disobedient.  This witch who could control “control the moon, make flows and ebbs,/And deal in her command without her power” (V.i.271-272).  Before she died, Sycorax managed to become the queen of her own island, exiled from the society that subjugated and demeaned her.  Not a bad plan, Sycorax.    

The Women of the Storm

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The first, and only, woman we meet in The Tempest is Miranda.  Miranda embodies the ideal Renaissance maid: she is innocent, chaste, compassionate, impressionable, and, most importantly, adoringly dutiful to her father. 
Miranda is around the same age as Juliet and, although she has no memory of her life of nobility, the way she treats her slave Caliban (which was at one time full of pity) indicates that she knows her standing as Prospero’s daughter.  Miranda falls in love with Ferdinand as quickly as young Juliet falls in love with Romeo, but her naiveté is far more untainted than the latter maid.  Upon casting eyes upon Ferdinand, Miranda says, “I might call him/A thing divine; for nothing natural/I ever saw so noble” (I.ii.419-421).  This line is an interesting play on the word “natural,” since nobility has a top echelon seat in the hierarchical, “chain of being” that defined “nature” in Elizabethan society.  

 If Miranda is the goddess of light of the natural world, Sycorax is the feminine energy that hides in the shadows; Sycorax represents the basest and vilest elements of nature.   We never meet Sycorax, but only know her through representation, which is primarily revealed through her son,  Caliban.  The “foul” “damned witch,” the “blue-eyed hag,” Sycorax, is spoken about with disdain, and Caliban’s sins are stem from having been a “hag-born,” a mere “hag-seed.”  Caliban is a villain by birth.  Sycorax is noted to have tortured the benevolent Ariel, and for having worked with black magic.   Like Prospero, Sycorax was banished from society and landed on the the same island, however, she uses supernatural forces destructively while Prospero uses them for the good.  Written following a forty year span of witch trials in Elizabethan England, The Tempest’s contrasts the epitome of  a despicable woman with the idealistic picture of a devoted ingénue daughter, illuminating the disparate gradations of a Renaissance woman. 

The “Un”-Sexed Women of Macbeth

Lady Macbeth: so heartless, brutal, and viciously cruel. Anyone who could, even in jest, talk about dashing in the brains of a smiling infant must be deranged.  And, yet, I wonder whether she is all talk, and the only power that she has is in beguiling and manipulating Macbeth.  Why, I wonder, is it so important to her that Macbeth secure the throne?  Everyone wants some semblance of power, and this basic human drive easily turns into pathology.  Perhaps, Lady Macbeth’s desire to be the Queen is sourced in her own sense of disempowerment as a woman in the hierarchy of Scottish society during the Elizabethan era; as far as society is concerned, she is nothing but a pawn of her father and husband.   In order to embody evil, she must call to supernatural forces to fill her with the “direst cruelty”(I.v.50).   While Lady Macbeth criticizes Macbeth for being cowardly and “unmanly,” she reveals her weakness when she admits that she would have done the deed of killing Duncan had he not resembled her father.  I think this admittance does suggest the inescapably of her paternalistic servitude. Lady Macbeth bolsters that she is "man" enough to go back to Duncan's

crime scene, and that only children are afraid of the dead, but it is Lady Macbeth who falls apart in the end, and eventually takes her own life (we are led to assume), because she is so riddled with guilt.  While Macbeth lives in torment, he also comes to embrace the tyrannous monster that he has become.  When Malcolm and Macduff have laid siege on his homestead, Macbeth comes face to face with Siward, whom he violently slays.  After the young man is slain, Macbeth scorns him in saying, “Thou wast born of woman./But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,/Branished by man that’s of a woman born (V.vii.15-18).  Being a woman is Lady Macbeth’s weakness.  Having any link to the nurturance of a yielding woman is the downfall of all.  Macduff, who was ripped from his mother’s womb too early, is the only one who is able to bring peace to the kingdom. 

Ultimately, it is the witches, the “Weird Sisters” who haunt Macbeth, and who are the ones who instigate the whole chain of events that lead to Macbeth’s downfall.  Lady Macbeth aligns with their supernatural powers, becoming as like the incarnate of an evil womanhood.  The “women” enact their destruction through the manipulation of the powers of Hecate, the goodness of darkness.  The witches personify the grotesqueness of a woman more powerful than her place, one who calls upon the sinister to do her “unnatural” bidding. 

Much Ado About Womanhood

Ending with harmony and joy, Much Ado About Nothing is an engagingly playful comedy that leaves the audience feeling light of spirit.  Beatrice is one of the most dynamic and interesting female characters Shakespeare ever wrote, as she is bursting with spirit, intelligence, humor, and compassion. Her banter with Benedick is ingenious, ripe with multiple layers of irony and subtexts.  The beauty of Beatrice is that she is utterly likeable; she is not coarse like Katharina, naive like Juliet, or docile like Hero, or simplistic like Bianca.  She is a woman in command, yet charming enough to get away with it.  And, yet, Beatrice is not too proud to expose her kindly heart, as she dies a thousand deaths with Hero or gently refutes Don Pedro’s offer to marry her. In Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation, Emma Thompson does a brilliant job personify the feisty vitality of this character.  

Beatrice surrenders easily to Benedick’s alleged love of her, but is not “tamed” like Katharina.  In a final confrontation between Benedick and Beatrice, he asks her if she loves him, to which she responds, “Why, no; no more than reason” (V.iv.78).  Beatrice refuse to show her belly under Benedick has first.  As a side note, speaking of Beatrice,

Even though women were subjugated by men in the Elizabethan era, and were expected to obey and  submit to the finer sex, it is not completely out of sync that Shakespeare created a strong woman suggestive of a woman from freer social times.  Women like Beatrice likely did exist, and did so in the likeness of the archetype of Queen Elizabeth herself.  If a woman like Beatrice in his time was as rare as the cuckoo bird, then Shakespeare was more than the visionary we have ever imagined.

The one aspect of the play that remains unsettling is Hero’s besmirching and her unquestioning forgiveness of the wrong.  She is powerless and does not think twice about it—her fate is in her father’s and her future husband’s control.  It is a sad case that is, unfortunately, as realistic as any other detail in the play.  A disgraced woman was to be dispensed of.