Molly Picon

            On Monday after midnight I did my usual search for bedbugs before lying down in their potential dining room and I was glad to once again find none. That makes it four days since I saw the last one. Pest control is coming on Friday. 

            I finished memorizing “Le vieux rocker” (The Old Rocker) by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but they aren't posted and so I started working them out. 

            Just before 9:00 I logged onto Zoom for today's Shakespeare lecture.

            All's Well That Ends Well brings to a close more than half the term. Our essay is due after reading week. 

            Professor Lopez decided to start differently today. He asked us to make observations about All's Well That Ends Well. He wants us to be interested and to see if we've internalized anything he's said about how to analyze Shakespeare. He said he does not care if we carry his method. Build your own. 

            I was the first person to speak. I said I think the play is about violation. Bertram is violated several times by Helena and by those she has manipulated or paid into helping her. Even Bertram's mother is complicit. I offered that Shakespeare may be making a statement about how women are violated in that era when they are forced into marriages. I suggested that he changed the gender of the victim to drive the point home. Another person being violated is Paroles, who is pompous and a liar but the way he is discovered is through being kidnapped, blindfolded, and threatened with hanging. The punishment does not fit his crime. In the end, he seems to be lowered to the position of the fool in someone's household. The violations are funny but violations nonetheless. 

            Professor Lopez responded that there is indeed lots of gender reversal in Shakespeare's plays. Hermia wants Demetrius in Midsummer Night's Dream. You have to marry someone else the father says. A man can impose his sexual will presented as a problem of social coercion presented as extreme. In All's Well That Ends Well the genders are reversed. The King plays the role as Bertram's father and tries to impose Helen's sexual will. The exposures and humiliations of Paroles and Bertram. The means of violation are different and experienced for different reasons but they are parallel. 

            For a while no one else had anything to say. I think the professor was very disappointed but finally,  Jorge also talked. He said Shakespeare seems childish in general with the plays consisting of a lot of games. 

            The professor said the idea that Shakespeare is childish and evocative of games is perceptive. "Games" is a good word. It doesn't capture it all but he can't think of a better one. Childishness in movement and resolution of plots. Game-like interactions between characters. We've seen that in The Comedy of Errors, The Winter's Tale, and some of 1 Henry IV. There is something ridiculous about any Shakespeare play. The childishness of All's Well That Ends Well runs deep. It's in a way an extended dirty joke with lots of scatological humour and emerging irreverent ways of looking at physical relationships. The conclusion of no Shakespeare play makes us happy. He delights in perversity or turns things back against themselves; gives the right thing at the wrong moment or vice versa. 

            This is also true of his contemporaries. Plays were deliberately ridiculous between 1642 and 1660. But his plays were also pregnant with potent meaning and verbal interconnectivity that transcended the play's events. He likes stories with a fairy tale element. Now we have capitalist sentiment about fairy tales. The schematic of a character with a task. In All's Well That Ends Well Helena also has a task. Cure the king so she can get what she wants from him. It's an “I have a wish” fairy tale with a magic potion. It's implausible but her desire is fulfilled. He does this more than his contemporaries. His contemporaries tended to write plottier tragedies with more violence on the plot level. They were tonally more of a piece in the same register. 

            But Shakespeare focuses on a single character. He likes to have a wide range of verbal textures in characters. In his comedies, he prefers fairy tales but his contemporaries preferred the satirical idiom of contemporary manners. Satire on a contemporary moment in a realistic feel in comic ways. Shakespeare eschews that. 

            In late 17th and early 18th Centuries people thought Shakespeare was ridiculous. Thomas Rymer wrote of this in “Plays of the Last Age” and “A Short View of Tragedy.” He thought English Renaissance drama was ridiculous, especially Othello which he considered to be the stupidest play ever. He was not speaking to Shakespeare worshippers because it wasn't a thing at the time to like Shakespeare. He said we write better plays now. Only over a hundred years did that change. Coleridge and others started to look at Shakespeare. 

            Yes there is a lot of improbability but Shakespeare is going for the sublime affect. We have to see the greatness and take the implausible and the ridiculous as a sign of its ambition. He refused to think in conventional ways. Since the 19th Century it's uncommon to hate Shakespeare. If you see it as ridiculous or exaggerated you are asked to try to see it as deliberate and reconcilable with the play and part of an artistic vision that transcends criticism. It is hard to say what is right. 

            Bach had people walk out of his concerts. There is something to be said for the novelty of genius that is ahead of its time and takes sixty or one hundred years to internalize the vocabulary that a novel art form gives people to attain. It took one hundred years to internalize the instructions but we've now internalized them. That's true of music as well. People were freaked out by Beethoven and Chopin. They said “What?” 

            Don't just give yourself over to Shakespeare. There is ridiculousness there so allow yourself to be critical and take objective distance. Shakespeare and his contemporaries were self conscious dramatists and enjoyed freedom to write in idioms that depended on wish fulfillment and cheaply satisfying effects. They wanted to excite people. But he also liked to represent lots of conflicting perspectives inside. There is self-consciousness that would reward interpretation. 

            Does all end well? Helen says “all's well that ends well.” It ends well for her because she nails Bertram down and she's pregnant. But it also doesn't end well because she gets Bertram. He's put into an impossible situation at the age of 18. He is now a ward of the king and an adopted son of the government. It's a good situation. He's noble and rich and will have an interesting future at the beginning. The first two acts are like Hamlet redone as a comedy. The passing of one generation and the rise of another. The King provided for all. Bertram is inexperienced. His mom gives a Polonius type speech like from Hamlet to give Bertram life advice as he ventures out. Bertram is a kid and Le Feu is asked to advise him. All through the play he's young and inexperienced and can't see through Paroles. Bertram is naive and credulous but trying. Just at the beginning of his career, he gets roped into marriage. He is forced to play a role in a bad marriage with someone below his class. She's one of the staff. 

            There is something understandable about his reaction but he's also a cad. He's snotty but we don't have to like him. In 2.3.101 Helena choose her husband by pointing to Bertram. He thinks it is a joke. Historically class is important in Shakespeare's time. It's pretty important now as well. It's not rigidly externalized now but if you marry out of your class send me an email in ten years. It happens, but marriage exists to keep people in the same class. People marry into the same socioeconomic level. Professor Lopez says he's the son of a general contractor. 

            It is nice to marry who one wants and not be forced. He understands this and rebels but he's so snide and incredulous it jars. In fairy tales marriages can be not of the same class and this one has a magic doctor. Lower class people have virtue that transcends class and so surely if a connection is made one can see that virtue. Surely Bertram's noticed. The play sets up those expectations. She talks to his mom. The countess knows already. She plays a trick and tells her to think of her as her mom. But Helen doesn't want that because she says it would be incest. The countess says not that way. She collaborates with Helena. This is great fairy tale stuff. Mom does not object because she sees Helena as noble. She did magic so the play should end there with Bertram saying “I do.” The play uses “well” in a double sense. “Well” is also the opposite of “sick.” When the king is well she asks for what she wants. Bertram doesn't know he's in a fairy tale. She has to prove her innate virtue with the king's backing. Bertram is in a different play where his wishes come true. He's maybe like Antipholas of Ephesus. Bertram is connected to the royal line and could become king. That is a foreclosed fairy tale. When Bertram rejects Helena's fairy tale it is jarring because he doesn't know the genre. He is almost too realistic and he never departs from it. 

            Scene 4.3 is the longest scene of the play. Paroles is set up by the two lords; Bertram trying to have sex with Diana; letters from mom; Helena dead. In the scene before that he achieves seduction with Diana but has sex with his own wife by mistake. Bertram gets what he wants and complications fall. His wife is dead and it's too bad but okay. He's done all his duties and had sex. Even in crisis, he maintains youthful callousness. But he had some fun too while doing what he was supposed to. He's valiant and good in wars, handsome, with a promising life. He doubles down on it and is not dragged down. Helena dies and that's too bad but my life is okay. 

            All's Well That Ends Well ends well for Helena but unfortunately, she gets what she wants. Another unpleasant moment with Helena is the hardest scene to watch. Bertram and Helena are parting at 2.5.71. Bertram sends Helena home She is now a submissive wife trying to make Bertram happy after winning him. She's not likable here. I'm not listening Bertram says. She reminds him she is low. I know how low you are don't bother me. She says I'm not worthy. She feels she's stealing. He torturing her. She says I'm not going to tell you what I want but I will tell you. Her self punishing desire is realistic. She does not want to make herself vulnerable but does not stop asking for what she wants. The pleasure from desire is the punishment it brings. If we are not strangers let's kiss. He turns her down. She knew he would. She wants a kiss and feels she doesn't deserve it. She is a masochist. It is a brilliantly written scene. They are both unattractive in this scene. 

            In Act 4 is the exposure of Paroles and then Act 5 Bertram is exposed when everybody he knows comes down on him. He is surrounded by people who've given him things. This is conventional Shakespeare. He precedes his exposure with exposure of two others. 

            We took a ten minute break. There were only 81 students in class today. 

            In 5.2 Paroles has returned from a rough journey back to France with a letter to LaFeu to ask for help in getting back in court. He's in bad shape, humiliated, exposed as a coward and a bad friend and left on his own. He arrives at the Countess's house and talks to Clown Lavache. He asks him to give LaFeu his letter. He says I used to be around here and looked nicer. It is discussed that his clothes had been ridiculous before with puffy sleeves and slits. He's a dandy. Clown says if this is what fortune does to one I don't want it. She smells. He's exaggerating. Paroles is physically degraded, muddy, and soiled. Lavache is enjoying mistreating Paroles. He is subordinate. A paper from fortune's toilet. The letter is toilet paper and what a stinking piece of shit Paroles is. This is purely indulgent scatological humour. Clown gets to point out his failings and be objective. He shows the true qualities of people and Paroles is a piece of shit. 

            At this point I lost my connection and it took me at least five minutes to get back to class. 

            “Oh lord sir" is Lavache's universal answer to everything. It is a levelling metaphor. The lower part of the body is artificial and distinct because everybody has a butt. All can be accommodated in the same vacuous manner. Clown is reducing Paroles to below his level. Clown has a satirical perspective that is tonally central to this play. We are the same. We are bodies. Paroles for all his verbosity, his clothes, and carrying the drum he ends up in muck, in shit, in the toilet of fortune. That is meant to be one interpretation of the play. It deflates all characters down to the bodily level. That is the effect of Helena's goodbye. The more Helena insists the less there is of the myth of love. It is just physical need. It's power can move if she can make him kiss her. He has to acknowledge it is not coercion. There is an element of power but also of self-punishment. That reduction of Helena is paralleled by the reduction of paroles at the end. 

           Around the two exposures, we have Bertram's in the end. Bertram and Paroles are wound together. In 3.6 two lords tell Bertram that Paroles is nothing and disloyal. They set a plan to prove it. After that in 3.7 Helena and the widow plan to catch Bertram. She says I am Bertram's wife. I need your daughter's help to trap and to redeem time. Two plots are in motion then. In 4.1 the captors of Paroles play the theatrical game in which they pretend to be foreign. Then Bertram meets Diana, seeming to persuade to her to have sex. Bertram is caught like Paroles. Then the lords talk of Bertram followed by the exposure of Paroles. In front of Bertram they take the blindfold off and then he sees himself. Then Helena is not dead. She had used her death to get Bertram. The blindfold of Paroles is parallel to Bertram having sex in the dark. 

            At the body level we are all the same. Bertram is focused on his conquest of Diana and doesn't check what body he's having sex with. He only wants sex and so he is reduced by his inability to feel the truth. The trapping and exposing of Paroles is intertwined with the trapping of Bertram. Another parallel is when Paroles arrives in court literally dirty and then Bertram comes metaphorically dirty. Are they both shit? The play doesn't allow them to be separate. They are moral equivalents. One can think in comparing them pessimistically that they are reduced to husks with nothing inside. But also maybe Paroles can be redeemed. There are redemptive possibilities for Bertram too. Third, compare when the soldier interpreter says you are undone, all but your scarf. Your scarf is to hang you. Affectations will hang you. 

            Paroles says, “Who can't be crushed with a plot?” If your own soldiers set out to deceive you to confess under duress and bring you before your best friend to prove you disloyal. If they set out to screw you what hope? Who wouldn't? Maybe any wouldn't act that way but he meant what cowards wouldn't. Who can't be crushed by a plot? “Not” and Knot. Helena undoes the knot of Bertram's conditions to tie the knot tighter around them. The extravagance of the machinery that led to exposing Bertram is also a target. If she's willing to do all this what chance does he have? One reading at the end is that Bertram is like many male protagonists. Antipholas, Hal, and Leontes are all unjustly rewarded. Bertram is not troubled by Helena's death. He could have objected in better terms. He could have said she was like a sister to him and he could not marry his sister. Even after marrying her he might not have tortured her by not kissing her. He might have acted differently. But Shakespeare made him unlikable. At the end we think why should Bertram be happy? He gets what he deserves because she has gone to unbelievable lengths. Leontes is back with the wife who has waited to expose herself for sixteen years. Who cannot be crushed with a plot? 

            To set up for next lecture. About getting what one wants. Diana at the end is rewarded for helping Helena. She gets to marry any french lord she wants. Diana said earlier at the end of 4.2. she is already disgusted with him. She will live and die a maid because she sees men are all alike. She does not want to marry. Think about that and getting more than one wants. The scatological element. The play's interest in satirical rhetoric, moral equivalents between classes and grouping by body similarities. The form we have is utilitarian. It is disgusting that everyone is made the same. Also Bertram and Paroles. At the beginning we learn the king's disease is a fistula. La Feu is a professional courtier. Everybody knows what the king has but don't talk about it. Look up fistula. It's an abscess that creates puss. In one of the stories the king has a fistula in his chest. Shakespeare thought of a fistula as an anal fistula in the bottom end of the body. In theatrical history it's a disease of the bottom. Think what this is and what it has to do with the end. I weighed 89.8 kilos before lunch. I took a bike ride in the afternoon to Yonge and Bloor. I stopped to look at a few boxes of things being thrown out at various locations but I didn't take anything. On Yonge Street a guy on a rented Ride bike was always ahead of me because he went through red lights. Perhaps he felt the boxing gloves that were hanging from his belt served as protection. I weighed 89.1 kilos when I got home. I worked on editing my lecture notes and was still not finished at dinnertime. I coated four chicken legs in olive oil, salt and paprika and grilled them in the oven. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching an episode of Gomer Pyle. I remember this story from probably when I was 14. An elderly woman who loves to cook has been moved out of her son's home because she won't stop cooking for her children and grandchildren. Sol Gordon is a rich businessman and he's put his mother in an apartment by herself because he's afraid if she's around the family she'll cook for them and wear herself out. Gomer meets her in the park and she invites him to come home for lunch. The next day she shows up at Camp Henderson with leftovers. When she meets Carter and Slater she invites them for dinner too and when Carter tastes her leftover chopped liver he says he'll be there. But when they arrive Molly's son Sol tells them to leave her alone because it will be bad for her health. Gomer doesn't want to just leave her when she's been so hospitable and so he invites her out to dinner in a restaurant. She reluctantly comes. It's a fancy steak house but she is disappointed with the food. She gets up and tells Gomer she'll be back in a minute. Several minutes later Gomer asks the waiter if he's seen Molly. He leads him to the kitchen where Molly is cooking for the chef and his staff. When Gomer walks her home and sees how happy Molly is he realizes her son is wrong. The next night Gomer brings the whole platoon to Molly's place and when Sol comes by he asks if Gomer is trying to kill his mother. Gomer politely asks Sol if he's trying to kill her. He explains that she will waste away if she has to sit on a bench. Sol realizes Gomer is right and invites his mother to live with his family again. Molly was played by Molly Picon, who was a Yiddish icon who entertained theatre, radio, film and television audiences for seven decades. She helped to introduce Yiddish culture to mainstream audiences. She started out on Vaudeville in 1919 in a group called The Four Seasons and became known as “The Sweetheart of 2nd Avenue.” She married Yiddish playwright Joseph Kalech, who became her manager and the author of many of the 200 Yiddish plays she starred in. Two of her most popular segments were “The working goil” and “The story of grandma's shawl.” She also starred in many Yiddish films. In 1934 she had her own radio program and her own theatre. She made her English-speaking Broadway debut in 1940. She played many roles as the main character's mother in several popular films. Her first book was about her family history and it was called, “So Laugh A Little.” Her autobiography was called “Hello Molly.” She was known both as The Female Charlie Chaplin and the Yiddish Helen Hayes. She co-wrote over a hundred songs and skits for the theatre. She was nominated for a Tony for her role in Milk and Honey. She played Mrs. Bronson on Car 54 Where Are You? She played Yente the Matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof.