The foundation for this work is established in Friedman’s opening chapter, which packs in a series of distinctions about performance criticism even as it introduces what he calls “the model narrative” embodied in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well that Ends Well, and Measure for Measure. Friedman notes that the plays have been commonly regarded as texts in which, for whatever reason, Shakespeare failed to produce plays matching the paradigm of his own romantic comedies. This dissatisfaction has been registered, for example, in the exasperation critics express with Proteus, Claudio, Bertram, and Angelo—a response epitomized in Samuel Johnson’s famous assertion that “I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram” (228). In response, Friedman writes :

Such an assessment, I would argue, misjudges the plays by applying to them generic standards that Shakespeare is not trying to meet. Instead of assuming that Shakespeare stumbled four times in precisely the same fashion, it may be time to hypothesize that the conclusions of these plays are designed, not to elicit joy at the reunion of heroes and heroines, but to draw attention to the contrived nature of the pardons that bring about these matches. Therefore, I propose that the four plays in question maybe more fruitfully assessed with reference to a different comic subgenre I will call the comedy of forgiveness. (22)

The “model narrative” includes the Forgiven Comic Hero (Proteus, Claudio, Bertram, Angelo, and Claudio); the Vice (Proteus, Don John, Parolles, Lucio) who corrupts the Hero by arousing a pervasive fear of being cuckolded by any woman the Hero considers marrying or has married; the Friend of the Hero (Valentine, Benedick, Parolles, Lucio); the Authority figure (the Duke of Milan, Don Pedro, Leonato, the King of France, the Duke of Vienna), who proposes or endorses the eventual marriages; the patient Griselda (Julia, Hero, Helena, Mariana), who endures rejection by the Comic Hero and frequently undergoes some form of apparent death; and the Shrew (Silvia, Beatrice, Diana, Isabella), whose proclaimed commitment not to marry is finally overcome—if it is overcome—by submission to a husband, who also functions to silence her at the play’s end. Friedman recognizes that, at least since John Barton’s 1970 RSC production of Measure for Measure, the endings of these plays leave open performance potentials which may undermine the concluding commitment to marriage and to “the procreative machine” which mandates that “The world must be peopled.” This aspect of the model impels him to articulate another distinction between the comedies of forgiveness and the romantic comedies, namely that “By my assessment, the operation of this social and biological imperative toward self-perpetuation characterizes the comedies of forgiveness far more accurately than does a drive toward the culmination of romantic desire” (29). The model narrative is encapsulated in a table (23) which indicates how Shakespeare varied the paradigm by splitting and uniting roles: for example, Proteus is both Forgiven Comic Hero and Vice, while Angelo and Claudio split the role of Forgiven Comic Hero, and Lucio shifts from Friend to Vice.

In framing the chapters on the specific plays, Friedman unpacks some of the dimensions of performance criticism. In particular, he distinguishes between diachronic and synchronic modes. While diachronic criticism focuses on recreating a single performance as an event unfolding in time, synchronic criticism “aims to produce critical insights through a three-part process: exploring the range of potential performance choices circumscribed by the printed text, describing the varying effects of such choices, and examining the cultural and historical reasons that one effect rather than another might be considered desirable” (16). In the four middle chapters, Friedman deploys these two modes in complementary fashion to perform three actions. First, he analyzes how the play both fulfills and modifies the model narrative. Second, he explores stage history to pinpoint segments where performances have sought to soften aspects of the hero which seem offensive or difficult for audiences and readers to accept: “On the page, it appears as if the Comic Hero offends mightily, apologizes weakly, and is forgiven too quickly and generously for his sins” (25). Third, and based on his own commitment to a feminist position, Friedman uses his stage history to propose imagined performances that would at once honor impulses to resistance while also orchestrating the marriages that, he argues, the text mandates:

Feminist criticism of Shakespeare displays a particular concern with the formation of gender roles, both male and female, and their repercussions for the behavior of men and women in the arenas of courtship, marriage, procreation, and childrearing. Although my emphasis rests discussion, my impression of how these plays might be staged is largely determined by my sense of how certain performance choices will affect a production’s orientation toward the status of women. (22)

As my opening anecdote suggests, the final payoff from this project is that it enables Friedman to demonstrate how The Winter’s Tale at once rehearses and revises the model narrative. Here he analyzes how Leontes and Paulina offer a profound re-thinking of the roles of Forgiven Comic Hero and Shrew earlier embodied in Claudio and Beatrice. In particular, he delineates how the play succeeds in developing Leontes as one who performs the deeper suffering, explicit acknowledgment of guilt, and more fully realized repentance that many spectators and readers desire from Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.

Michael Friedman has produced a book which I find illuminating, not only for providing an account that enables me to grasp why The Winter’s Tale functions so powerfully to illuminate dissatisfactions with the last two acts of Much Ado, but also for providing a framework for coherent investigation of these four plays and another model employing performance criticism as a tool that combines critical and creative impulses. I know I will be sharing this work with my students even as I employ its model narrative and its perceptive criticism in my own work on the design and performance history of these plays.

--Edward L. Rocklin, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Essays in Theatre/Études théâtrales

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