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A Letter to Leontes

Character types, Psychological states, The Winter's Tale, Tragic hero, Tragicomedy

Dear Leontes,

You may think you are not one of the beloved characters to the audience of The Winter’s Tale. You may think every one in the audience of The Winter’s Tale has a negative attitude towards your character. You treat Hermione out of jealousy; you treat Polixenes unfriendly; you are to blame for the death of Mamillius, your young son whom you love as much as every father on this earth loves his child; you are also to blame for the death of dearest Hermione; and finally, under your command newborn Perdita is left on the seacoast of  Bohemia.

All these events take a toll in your life. You have suffered for 16 years. These 16 years, you have mourned over your virtuous queen’s death. Yes, you are wrong to think of her having a romantic relation with Polixenes. Georges Duby would support your suspicions, though. In his A Courtly Model, Duby explains that courtly love is secret and not seen in marriage life since medieval marriages were not based on love. Nonetheless, you have proved that maybe you didn’t wed Hermione out of love, but you have showed the audience that the magical thing that has kept you in mourning all those years is nothing but love, your passionate love.

You are very cruel to newborn Perdita, who you think isn’t your legitimate daughter. So, you order her to be abandoned, because you don’t want to be called Father by a bastard. Your decision to abandon Perdita is very common for a royal family in the medieval age where bloodline determines the heirs to thrones.

Human beings are not angels. Like angels, we don’t live in a divine realm where mistakes presumably don’t exist. We live in a human world where making mistakes is obvious. We make mistakes because our knowledge is limited. Therefore, making mistakes from not knowing should be justified.

In the beginning of the play, you are the King Leontes, Father Leontes, Friend Leontes and Husband  Leontes. But only one mistake, one unknowing mistake destroys the whole chain of relationship. You suspect Hermione and Polixenes, which makes you angry, which leads to a break in life-long friendships, which causes a motion to throw Hermione into the prison, which leads to the separation of Mamillius from his mother and to his death, which forces you to abandon Perdita. You cause the disruption 16 years ago in Sicilia with a mistake.

Now, after 16 years here you are again, King Leontes, facilitating the reunification of all broken relationships. In Sicilia, Perdita finds her father, Polixenes meets his old true friend, and fair Hermione is restored to life with a magic touch.

It all starts from Sicilia, at the court of Leontes, it all ends now in Siciclia, at the court of Leontes. This 16-years-later Leontes has learned from the time, from his mistakes.

 

A few words on the philosophy of justice in Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure, Psychological states

Among all other themes in Measure of Measure, Justice is the central one towards which all characters and their actions are inclined. It all starts off with the protagonist’s, the Duke, plan to take a short leave from the power and empower someone well known for having profound integrity in justice and morality. Few questions rose to my mind while I was reading the opening scene of the play regarding the Duke’s intension of leaving his chair to Angelo, a man believed to have strong sense of ethics and duties, and disguising himself as a friar. However, as I continued to read the play, the underlying objectives of Duke’s plan started to unfold clearly in front of my eyes. It’s a test that he left for Angelo to conquer as a rational being, but Angelo, nonetheless, found himself as a human being, who was a slave to his personal necessities.

‘’If power changes purpose’’ (1.4.54), this quote hints the purpose of the Duke’s plan, to see whether power is superior to morality. Angelo’s verdict towards Claudio was objective at first, assuming Vienna had good laws, and he, as the interim Duke, followed  the code of laws for the sake of good of societies and its citizens . However, It became subjective on the arrival of Isabella, who came begging mercy on her brother, Claudio. His action was justifiable at the beginning, but it started deviating from the moral ground while his desire for her started losing ground in his consciousness. Here, desires consumed duties.

We define justice to be universal, uniform and equal to every one regardless of one’s status and situations. In a true rational world, we define our morality, according to Immanuel Kant, based on reasons. Kant gave us an account on justice and morality, which depend on freedom and reasons.  From the Kantian point of view, given this situation, Angelo as a Duke didn’t do justice on Claudio out of duty, but rather out of inclination, out of his personal interests towards Isabella. As a result, his motive of judgment lacked moral value. His determination of will, sentencing death penalty to Claudio, wasn’t autonomous as he wasn’t following the reasons; he was following the trail of his personal necessities. He wasn’t acting freely, autonomously, but he was acting heteronomously.

Angelo’s actions would have been moral, if he hadn’t chosen the Claudio as a means to an end, his desire for Isabella, if he hadn’t acted out of the motive of inclination. It would have been moral, if he had made the justice for the sake of justice, if he acted out of the motive of duty.

‘’Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.’’

Immanuel Kant.

For Kant, motive is what gives our actions moral value. So when we have motive of duty, not the motive of inclination, then we only act out of duty, then we resist our motive for acting on our self-interest.

Angelo failed to rise above his self-interests. He failed to respect Isabella’s dignity. Even after she agreed with his proposal to save her brother’s life, he yet secretly gave the provost order to have Claudio executed. He didn’t keep his promise, which is odd with the categorical imperative. He used Claudio as a means to an end. His motives were the motives of inclination, his determination of will was heteronomous and his reasons were hypothetical.

Therefore, his all actions were immoral.

Angelo hasn’t given ground to his desire to Isabella, but he has to his morality to justice.

Group 2 Critique

Hamlet

Group 2 Critique

Nick Toth

Levi Weekes

Amzad Hossain

 “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”: this is the line that drew us to choose these scenes. It seemed to us that the characters that spoke these lines had something to hide.  They seemed somehow disingenuous.  Their answers were vague and never seem to truly answer the question that was directed towards them.  It was almost as if they were indifferent to everything, avoiding revealing too much about themselves and why they were there.  This of course turns out to be true, as we learned that they were there to spy on Hamlet.

During rehearsal, while we were practicing speaking our lines out loud, we realized that acting out the scenes gives us a far different perspective of what is going on compared to reading the scenes silently. While reading, we tend to ignore the words that aren’t familiar to us, especially in Shakespearean Era English, because of its often hard-to-pronounce or difficult-to-understand qualities. However, this tendency to ignore words turned into a process of discovery.  “My honored Lord…My most dear Lord…My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do you both?”  These are the first three lines that appeared in our scene, and as soon as we said them the first time, it just didn’t feel right to us. There was something that we were not doing properly, something that we’re missing.  We had to gain an insight into why those words were chosen, and the manner in which they were said.  Words create the characters, their demeanor and their presence on stage; they must be used in the proper tone and manner in order to convey the desired message that the character wanted to get across.  When all these elements are put together correctly, the words and delivery, Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern are brought to life on the stage.

For example, something that was very useful was that this past summer one of us watched ‘The Comedy of Errors in Central Park. His experience of watching the play live came to our aid in our small squared recording room when we were trying to figure out what it was that we weren’t getting right. This was our voice; we were not using our voices in the right tone.  We also had to use proper gestures and body language to support the tone we were speaking in.  Originally we were all very stiff, not moving around, and it came off wrong.  After some time, we read in-between the lines and imagined what type of actions would be going on while these words were spoken.  We stood still on the ground as if we had been nailed in there.

After a few trial runs, we felt that we had finally gotten the proper tone and gestures down pat.  We combined all of it together in order to try to bring these characters to life, the best we could.  We changed our tone when needed according to the dialogues, to show the tension that was happening in the scenes.  The words found the characters, and characters found the words.  Finally, after some diligent analysis of the lines in that small, square and dimly light room, we believe that we found a proper voice to tell the story of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

 

Helpful links:

Scenes:

  • Act 2. Scene 2

~2:00-4:40

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8C4gPU_hEU

  • Act 3 Scene 2

~5:20-6:57

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alfutKH2388&list=PL8653490E2C680C5C&index=15

  • Notes on the recorder scene

http://www.rutgersprep.org/kendall/ap/hamletfolder/analTL01Hamlet.html

A Highwayman and His Guilt

1 Henry IV, Psychological states

Shakespeare shows an account of guilt in 1 HenryIV and draws a picture of how it literally consumes a king for his past deeds throughout his ruling time.  Henry IV’s overthrowing king Richard II seating himself on the throne is presumably the source of his guilt. Once a strong and chivalric nobleman, Henry Bolingbroke now turns out to be a weak and aged king Henry in 1 Henry IV. We, the audience, can take a peek into his spooky soul through his words usage throughout the play.

 

In the beginning of the play, the audience hears the tension and hardship king Henry going through by the word “ shaken,” which echoes the sound of civil war across his kingdom. It can also be a reminder to the audience, those who have seen King Richard II, of Henry Bolingbroke and his usurpation of  the throne, followed by taking King Richard a prisoner and having him assassinated. As a result, we aren’t surprised at all seeing him tremble at the news of civil war, since it may bring King Henry back through flashback to Henry Bolingbroke. He may have foreseen another uprising and be terrified of another invasion to his illegitimate kingship.

 

Robbery, Rochester, Roads- all seem to symbolize the sick environment of king’s kingdom that gives rise to highwaymen. The robbery scenes in Act 2 Scene 2 and 4, to my mind, is an allegory of King Richard’s kingdom loss to Henry. Henry, in a sense, robbed this kingdom, like a highwayman, from King Richard. Falstaff, along with Gadshill and Peto firstly robs the travelers, and then he gets robbed by Hal and Poins. By this robbery scene Shakespeare maybe tries to give his audience a subtle hint that King Henry and Falstaff both act out of same motivation even though Henry hasn’t got robbed ( he still has his kingdom) in the play unlike Falstaff.

 

Shakespeare makes it more relevant to the plot of 1 Henry IV by creating the character the Highwaymen where the king himself holds one on the same skeleton.