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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 14.2374  Tuesday, 16 December 2003

[1]     From:   Annalisa Castaldo <axc0307@mail.widener.edu>
        Date:   Monday, 15 Dec 2003 09:06:18 -0500 (EST)
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"

[2]     From:   Larry Weiss <larry@lweiss.net>
        Date:   Monday, 15 Dec 2003 14:08:27 -0500
        Subj:   Re: SHK 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Annalisa Castaldo <axc0307@mail.widener.edu>
Date:           Monday, 15 Dec 2003 09:06:18 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"

Thomas Larque and David Evett are right, but it seems (I qualify because
I haven't consulted anything but my memory) that Helena is the only
character who is successfully socially upward despite sharp protests
from a main character. Malvolio drams of rising socially and is cruelly
mocked for it. The characters mentioned either eventually unsuccessful -
Othello, Richard III - or are accepted into their new level with open
arms - the Bastard, the shepherds in Winter's Tale.

I'm discounting those characters who are mistaken for a lower social
rank, or whose fortunes have fallen, such as Perdita. They are always
recognized as having innate nobility, and often the plot turns on that
characteristic.

Annalisa Castaldo

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Larry Weiss <larry@lweiss.net>
Date:           Monday, 15 Dec 2003 14:08:27 -0500
Subject: 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"
Comment:        Re: SHK 14.2362 Rhyming Couplets in "All's Well"

>Michael Skovmand's proposition that Helena is "the only socially upward
>character in all of Shakespeare's plays, and a woman to boot" is belied
>by Falconbridge in *Jn*

Actually, Falconbridge is downwardly mobile.  He starts out as the
acknowledged heir of a gentleman.  He then concedes his bastardy, thus
forsaking both his material inheritance and his social status.

WS correctly anticipates the 18th Century "irrebutable presumption" --
Lord Mansfield's Rule --  that the child of a married woman is the child
of her husband.  Does anyone know if the same rule prevailed in the
early 13th Century and the late 16th Century?

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