Love and Lies

Let me just dictate my thinking process here:

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How does Henry communicate? Does Henry lie?

It seems like Henry has nothing to gain from convincing Katharine to marry him. During that time period women have very little choice especially in terms of political agendas, so he really has nothing to gain from convincing her that he loves her. Her father will most likely sign the treaty regardless of how Katharine feels about Henry. So why does Henry take the time to “woo” Katharine? What does he gain from this?

Then I thought, “Well maybe everyone else is right. What if Henry is lying?” But that didn’t sit well with me, so I did some research about why people lie and the affects that lying has on interpersonal relationships. One article I found discussed Attachment Theory and authenticity.

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Attachment Theory: “The theory is built on the core observation that security-enhancing caregivers or “attachment figures” (usually beginning with parents or other primary care providers in childhood) help a child develop positive mental representations of self and relationship partners.”

Authenticity: is being honest with, or true to, oneself

“Children and adults with a history of supportive attachment relationships are notably less defensive, more mindful of their feelings, more genuinely empathic, and more open in communicating with relationship partners,” and attachment insecurity “is associated with negative views of relationship partners, unwillingness to disclose feelings to partners; reluctance to seek and provide help; and low relationship satisfaction, trust, and commitment” and “fears of rejection or abandonment and doubts about one's value to other people.”

After the Final Rose (My happily ever after?)

I did it. I found my connection, my Shakespeare research paper soul mate, and we're in love. Hopefully this love lasts longer than any Bachelor contestant's love, because I'm not here to play games. I'm here to find my thesis.

Ok, enough with the lame Bachelor jokes (they relate, I promise). This past week or so I've been struggling to find a topic for my paper that really resonated within me. My play I chose to read was Twelfth Night, and while I absolutely loved the play, I felt as though it didn't give me something to latch on to. It did, however, give me a dive board from which I feel into the genre of researching love and romance. I took to Facebook immediately, figuring the masses would definitely have something to say on the subject. That was my first mistake. I received no response. I figured it was because I either

a. was too general in my questions, or

b. asked way too many in one status update

(probably both)

So I switched tactics. After reading Amelia's comment here, I had an idea: 

I can't believe I'm admitting this, but I love the Bachelor/ette reality TV show. I'm addicted to it, like millions of other men and women (8.6 million, to be exact), so why not explore it's connection to Shakespeare? I thought I'd see what Facebook had to say about this. 

Somebody actually posted this in response to my questions.

The initial response wasn't great. I got a pretty strong negative reaction at first, but it's always darkest before the dawn. I finally got a positive response from (gasp) another English major! We began discussing the similarities between reality TV today and Shakespeare in the past. We came down to this basic idea:

People throughout the ages seem to have this obsession with unrequited love, finding love, crazy passionate love, puppy love, mismatched love... the list really goes on. From the mismatched love of Midsummer Night's Dream, to the gender confused triangle in Twelfth Night, people love love, and that love has carried over into the modern world (Don't believe me, check it out here. People have DEFINITELY taken from Shakespeare's love plots to create the reality TV we watch today). But, it's not just love that we love, it's love that's seemingly out of our control, love manipulated by someone with greater power than those experiencing the infatuation. And we don't just like it when love is manipulated be someone, but when everything is out of the hands of the hero/ine. Take The Tempest, where really everything lies in the hands of Prospero, or The Bachelor/ette, where everything lies in the hands of the producers (let's be real here, people. we all know this is true). 

So this is where I'm a little stuck. Maybe this whole connection to Shakespeare seems contrived to you, but I really do think there's something there. I mean I just see a lot of connections between reality TV today and the way Shakespeare's characters manipulate and handle love in the plays. What do you think? Hopefully you're in agreement, because I really really don't want to find another topic.  

Royal Pains, Family Pains

I've been doing some reading up on King Lear and its critical interpretations about family and monarchy. The ONE good article I have so far is a transcript of a panel discussion between several fathers who have just watched a stage production of King Lear and are discussing its implications about fatherhood from their own personal experience. They commented a lot about what kind of relationship Lear had with his daughters and what he expected from them, and they noted the absence of the princesses' mother.

This made me think about my idea about the Tudors. What kind of a father was Henry VIII to his children? From the numerous books I have read about the Tudors I have come to several conclusions. The facts are that they were raised away from him for the most part, and the mothers of both of his daughters were estranged from Henry before their untimely deaths, so they probably were not very close. Edward is usually depicted as a somewhat spoiled favorite, partly because he was the male heir Henry had always wanted, and I can imagine that Jane Seymour's good sense to die before Henry could find anything wrong with her helped a lot. I can see Henry being the same kind of father-figure that the men in the panel discussion saw King Lear was to his daughters: imperious and demanding respect. And for much of their lives they lacked the presence of a mother figure.

It is not hard to imagine how this kind of childhood would have affected the rest of their lives. Elizabeth, of course, never married. Mary was married to Phillip II of Spain and was determined to produce an heir, but she was years older than him and he was never very close to her and cheated on her. Mary also hated Elizabeth because their father had dumped her mother Katherine  of Aragon for Elizabeth's mother Anne Boylen. Mary exiled Elizabeth to run-down estates in distant parts of England, perhaps as revenge because Henry had done the same thing to Mary's mother and this ill-treatment resulted in her death.

It kind of makes you think about how difficult it is to be a monarch or a member of a monarch's family. Natural family ties are corrupted as parents and children are divided into different court factions competing for power, and siblings and parents end up hurting and betraying each other, sometimes killing one another. Although Elizabeth and Philip II were rivals and Phillip wanted to invade England, the mind-blowing fact that he was technically her brother-in-law makes you wonder what would drive him to do it. Is there more to family than blood or marriage ties?

"Gamble everything for love" -Rumi

Talk to me about love. Specifically, define love for me. 

1. If love is unreturned, does that justify spiteful actions of revenge towards the unfeeling? 
2. Can unrequited love change the definition of love? 
3. How can love be a major driving factor in decision making and character building? 
4. Does the way a person love define who they are? 
5. If two people are suffering from unrequited love, yet they handle the situation in different ways (say threatening to kill/ volunteering to die), does that mean they both are really in love, or does one (or both) just think they're in love?

These are some questions I've been mulling over in my head in regards to the play Twelfth Night. My attention was draw to this idea of unrequited love during this little exchange between Viola and Orsinio in Act V:

ORSINIO: Come, boy, with me.

My thoughts are ripe in mischief:

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love

To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.

VIOLA: And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly,

To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.

Wait, what? Orsinio is willing to 'sacrifice'* his servant Cesario (that's Viola's disguise), and Viola is willing to let him? 

In the play, both of these characters suffer from unrequited love. Orsinio is in love with Olivia, and can't seem to take a hint, and Viola is dressed as a man, so of course Orsinio doesn't love her back. But that's not what's interesting. 

Both are dealing with watching their love love another, yet they handle it in starkly different ways:

• Orsinio takes the vengeful "I'll teach you" path, deciding to 'sacrifice' his most trusted and faithful servent Cesario (spoiler, it's Viola!) because he knows Olivia loves Cesario (awk). 
• Viola (as Cesario) takes the "anything for you my love" path, and agrees to be sacrificed!

*It's never directly stated what Orsinio means when he says he's going to sacrifice Cesario (banish him, fire him, imprison him), so I've taken my creative license to interpret it as he will be killing Cesario. 

This raised the questions you read above. Why do they take such vastly different cathartic measures in dealing with their problems? What does this reveal about the characters, and in turn, they play? How does it change our idea of love in the modern world?

Your thoughts, my homies?