Question of the Week
We did a reading of As You Like It yesterday, and the question of the best marriage in Shakespeare came up again.
Here’s what I had to say last year in response to Cesario, a fellow blogger who suggested that it was the Macbeths:
I’ve heard Harold Bloom express this opinion, and I get the equal partnership aspect, but I find their relationship too dysfunctional and codependent to pay them this compliment. The title “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” is a dubious honor, but I think I’d have to go with Brutus and Portia. They seem like they have a really strong relationship. The fact that it can be torn apart by the assassination is a testament to the earth-shattering significance of that event. We won’t count the marriages at the end of the comedies, because who knows how they’ll fare?
But now, I turn the question over to you.
What’s the best marriage in Shakespeare?
P.S. Cesario is currently annotating the text of Hamlet, scene by scene, on her blog. Check it out.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Well, I have to go with two pair, Lysander and Hermia, and Helena and Demetrius.
What makes them so perfect are that they start with conflict and troubles, then the conflicts and troubles are tripled, and eventually, they all find their lovers.
And since this is a comedy, they have trouble at the beginning, and happiness at the end. (Which explains Desdemona, Juliet, etc.)
May 26th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Best tragedy marriage? Hmmm…Desdemona and Othello. Why not? They loved each other, they cared for each other, just one person messed that up. What also made the marriage stronger was that they were biracial. I’m not exactly sure how often biracial marriages were in the Elizabeth era, but since both of them came over it, it made their marriage even stronger.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Surely we should look to the Histories – full of ‘good’ marriages – I am quite fond of Hotspur and his wife; also in The First Part of the Contention of the Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (Henry VI – part 2) Silly Eleanor Cobham and her husband, Humphrey (Gloucester).
Henry V makes a good one.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I’m sensitive to the Macbeth argument–certainly, I think the play works infinitely better if the Macbeths are partners, and passionate about each other, than if they are not–but Bloom actually calls them the “happiest” married couple in Shakespeare, which is flatly absurd: please show me the scene in which they are “happy.” Among other things, the play is about the progressive alienation of a married couple; they are only “happy” in some conjectural “Act Zero” in Bloom’s mind, and if he gets to write an Act Zero for Macbeth, then we are all equally entitled to write an “Act Six” for All’s Well, or Much Ado, or As You Like It, and make their romantic leads the happiest in Shakespeare.
Based on what’s actually in the plays, I would probably pick Pericles and Thaisa, but your guess is really as good as mine.
May 25th, 2016 at 8:16 pm
[…] http://www.shakespeareteacher.com/blog/archives/465 Shakespeare Teacher’s got up the “question of the week”, who has the best marriage in Shakespeare? Is it, as Harold Bloom suggests, the Macbeths? No taking the easy way out – ShakespeareTeacher doesn’t want to count any comedies that end in weddings, since we don’t technically know how the marriage will work out. What do you think? […]