Not
everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth
reading. "Something old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique
classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
“A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS” by Thomas
Heywood (first performed 1603; first published 1607)
When
a character in a play delivers himself of such a self-satisfied speech as the
following, then we can be sure his happiness is about to crumble and his peace
of mind be shattered:
How happy am I amongst other
men,
That in my mean estate embrace content!
I am a gentleman, and by my birth
Companion with a king; a king's no more.
That in my mean estate embrace content!
I am a gentleman, and by my birth
Companion with a king; a king's no more.
I am possess’d of many fair
revenues,
Sufficient to maintain a
gentleman;
Touching my mind, I am studied in all arts;
The riches of my thoughts and of my time
Have been a good proficient; but, the chief
Touching my mind, I am studied in all arts;
The riches of my thoughts and of my time
Have been a good proficient; but, the chief
Of all the sweet felicities
on earth,
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I have a fair, a chaste, and
loving wife, —
Perfection all, all truth, all ornament.
If man on earth may truly happy be,
Of these at once possest, sure, I am he.
Perfection all, all truth, all ornament.
If man on earth may truly happy be,
Of these at once possest, sure, I am he.
This is Master John Frankford
soliloquising at the beginning of Act Two of Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed With Kindness, first
performed in 1603, the year James I took the throne of England, but rightly
regarded as a thoroughly Elizabethan play in its dramaturgy. Thomas Heywood was
born some time in the 1570s but died in 1641, at a ripe old age for his times.
He was essentially an adept hack, who churned out plays and pamphlets with
equal facility and was apparently most famous in his day for his comedies. The
domestic tragedy A Woman Killed With
Kindness is sometimes called his masterpiece, which does make me wonder how
bad most of his output must have been, for this lumpy and uneven play is no
masterpiece. Heywood outlived both Shakespeare and Jonson, but never came near
their skill and subtlety in characterisation. Yet a recent re-reading reminds
me that I have an odd sort of affection for this play.
It does not have the rough, almost documentary, vigour of the anonymous Arden of Feversham
[look up my comments on it via the index at right], which preceded it by a
decade. Its characters are thin and often act without clear motivation. Its two
separate plots do not fit together easily. But for all its crudities, much of
it works and it has scenes that can play well on the stage and move an audience.
To get back to
John Frankford’s hubristic invitation to nemesis.
Frankford has married
Mistress Frankford. She is usually called just that in the play – Mistress
Frankford. Feminists could justly complain that such nomenclature signifies a
woman seen as a man’s property. Mistress Frankford is, however, addressed as “Nan”
a number of times in the latter half of the play, so critics usually designate
her Anne. John Frankford is a generous hearted man who feels that God has been
good to him. Out of the goodness of his heart, Frankford invites a pleasant,
but impoverished gentleman, Wendoll, to live with him and his wife. But when
Frankford is away Wendoll, although he knows Frankfort is his benefactor,
although he is aware that what he contemplates is sinful, embarks on an affair
with Mistress Frankfort.
And how does Frankfort react
when his faithful servant Nicholas tells him of this?
First with disbelief; then
with prudence.
Unlike Othello, who is more
easily confounded by Iago’s fabrications, Frankford will not believe what he
has been told until he has real proof. So he pretends to go off on urgent
business in order to come back and spy on his wife and his friend. He finds
Wendoll and Anne in flagrante.
Wendoll flees in panic. Mistress Frankford expects the severest of punishment
from her husband. Instead, Frankford acts in a way that would seem mild in a
husband four hundred years ago. In tears of sorrow, he takes exclusive custody
of the couple’s children, then gives Anne every luxury and servants to attend
her, but banishes her from his sight forever by making her live in one of his
distant properties.
He declares:
My
words are regist'red in Heaven already.
With patience hear me! I'll not martyr thee,
Nor mark thee for a strumpet; but with usage
With patience hear me! I'll not martyr thee,
Nor mark thee for a strumpet; but with usage
Of more humility torment thy soul,
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And
kill thee even with kindness. (IV, v)
So, in the last act, the
banished Anne Frankford dies in sorrow and remorse, starving herself, but not before
one final scene where she and John reach some sort of reconciliation.
Reiterating the play’s title, the final words of the play are spoken at Anne’s
deathbed by her brother Sir Francis Acton, and her husband. They go thus:
Sir Francis: Peace
with thee, Nan! — Brothers
and gentlemen, All we that can plead interest in her grief,
Bestow upon her body funeral tears!
Brother, had you with threats and usage bad
Punish'd her sin, the grief of her offence
Had not with such true sorrow touch'd her heart.
Bestow upon her body funeral tears!
Brother, had you with threats and usage bad
Punish'd her sin, the grief of her offence
Had not with such true sorrow touch'd her heart.
Frankford: I see it
had not; therefore, on her grave
Will I bestow this funeral epitaph,
Which on her marble tomb shall be engrav'd.
In golden letters shall these words be fill'd: 2
Here lies she whom her husband's kindness kill'd.
Will I bestow this funeral epitaph,
Which on her marble tomb shall be engrav'd.
In golden letters shall these words be fill'd: 2
Here lies she whom her husband's kindness kill'd.
This is an admission by
Frankford that there has been a real cruelty in his “kindness”.
If this were the play’s sole
plot, it could have been developed as a tense psychological drama.
Unfortunately there is another strand of plot, which it is hard to call a
“subplot” as it takes up as much of the play as the Frankfords’ marital
problems do. Never – except in Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling – have I met a play where there is such disjunction
between two threads of plot.
The second plot of A Woman Killed With Kindness concerns a
quarrel between Sir Francis Acton, Mistress Frankford’s brother, and Sir
Charles Mountford. They fall out in a brawl over their respective falconry
skills. The brawl leads to the death of some of their servants. Sir Charles Mountford
is hauled before a sheriff and is financially ruined by a sharper called
Shafton. Sir Francis Acton, after first gloating over Mountford’s ruin, falls
in love with Mountford’s sister Susan and, in the hope of sweetening her
feelings for him, tries to buy Mountford out of jail. In the end, despite the
initial misgivings of Susan and Mountford, Sir Francis and Susan are wed. One
could say that, in effect, Susan is sold to
buy Mountford out of debt. There is possibly an intentional sense here too of a
“woman killed with kindness” in the way Sir Francis lavishes unwanted
attentions on Susan.
Given that both strands of
plot concern, ultimately, marriage and the relationships of men and women, A Woman Killed With Kindness has been a
happy hunting ground for critics and exegetes who want to explore the play as
an exemplar of proprietary male attitudes towards women and (implicitly) also
want to condemn the play’s antiquated male chauvinism. Go on line and you can
read reviews of a recent London production of the play. The woman who directed it
chose to costume the play in early 20th century style, with a set
that placed the John-and-Anne Frankford plot, and the Sir-Francis-and-Susan
plot, side-by-side to point up parallels in these two examples of men treating
women as property. Of course this is a legitimate reading of the play, though I
think the most fruitful thing in this line is an article by Jennifer Panek
called “Punishing Adultery in A Woman
Killed With Kindness” (which you can also find easily on line). Panek’s
view is that the play is really a sophisticated critique of John Frankford’s
behaviour. As Panek reads it, Frankford does not treat his wife as a companion
and equal, but instead chooses a male to fill this role. The male is Wendoll.
By his foolish choice, Frankford invites into his home the very thing that
destroys his marriage. Therefore failure to treat a spouse as an equal is the
real enemy of marriage.
On the printed page such
arguments are persuasive. And yet there is a great difference between what can
be perceived rationally in a play by a critic, and the dramatic impact that a play
actually has when read or performed. After reading ingenious efforts to fit the
two plots thematically together, I still end up agreeing with T.S.Eliot (in his
1931 essay on Heywood) that the play has brilliant moments but the subplot is
mainly padding.
I could note the
play’s crudities. There are dead obvious attempts to appeal to the whole
audience – hence the play opens with dancing among the gentlefolk just after the
wedding of Frankfort and Mistress Frankfort (I, i), but then follows it with a scene
of servants and others having a knees-up (I, ii) for no other purpose than to
appeal to the groundlings. Characters change suddenly only because the plot
demands it. Shafton treats the disgraced Sir Charles Mountford as a friend (II,
i) and then (III,i) suddenly turns the law on him to cheat him out of his
property. Sir Francis Acton gloats over Mountford’s fall and has lustful
thoughts about raping and dishonouring Mountford’s sister Susan; then suddenly,
in the same scene, he falls genuinely in love with Susan. In scenes like these,
the play is almost like a medieval morality play where, subtlety and psychology
be damned, characters wear signs around their necks saying “Villain”, “Dupe”,
“Victim” and act strictly according to the exigencies of the plot. There are
also uncomfortable leaps in time. The Frankfords are newly married in Act One,
but in Act Four, when Frankford is parting from his adulterous wife, there are
children to consider. It has not been clearly marked to us that years have gone
by in the story’s unfolding.
So why do I
still like this play?
Despite
everything, its broad-stroke and slapdash technique does allow moments of wit
and brilliance. The scene of falconry, which turns into a bloody and lethal
fight between the followers of Sir Francis Acton and the followers of Sir
Charles Mountford, could almost be seen as symbolic of a rapacious society
where human animals prey upon other human animals. The scene where Frankfort plays cards with Anne and Wendoll, after
his servant Nicholas has advised him of their adultery, shows the language of
card-sharping becoming code for sexual betrayal. The suddenness with which Anne
is seduced has troubled many commentators, but dramatically it is offset by Wendoll’s
full awareness (in the play’s most famous speech) that he is committing sin as
he moves to seduce her:
O
God, O God! With what a violence
I'm hurried to mine own destruction !
There goest thou, the most perfectest man
I'm hurried to mine own destruction !
There goest thou, the most perfectest man
That ever England bred a gentleman,
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And
shall I wrong his bed ? —Thou God of
thunder !
Stay, in Thy thoughts of vengeance and of wrath
Thy great, almighty, and all-judging hand
From speedy execution on a villain, —
thunder !
Stay, in Thy thoughts of vengeance and of wrath
Thy great, almighty, and all-judging hand
From speedy execution on a villain, —
A villain and a traitor to his friend. (II, iii)
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There is also
the careful prudence of Frankford, who does not immediately accept Nicholas’s
report of the adultery:
Away ! Begone ! —
She is well born, descended nobly;
Virtuous her education; her repute
She is well born, descended nobly;
Virtuous her education; her repute
Is in the general voice of
all the country
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Honest and fair; her
carriage, her demeanour,
In all her actions that concern the love
To me her husband, modest, chaste, and godly.
Is all this seeming gold plain copper?
But he, that Judas that hath borne my purse,
In all her actions that concern the love
To me her husband, modest, chaste, and godly.
Is all this seeming gold plain copper?
But he, that Judas that hath borne my purse,
Hath sold me for a sin. O
God! O God!
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Shall I put up these wrongs?
No! Shall I trust
The bare report of this suspicious groom,
Before the double-gilt, the well-hatch'd ore
Of their two hearts? No, I will lose these thoughts;
The bare report of this suspicious groom,
Before the double-gilt, the well-hatch'd ore
Of their two hearts? No, I will lose these thoughts;
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Distraction I will banish
from my brow,
And from my looks exile sad discontent.
Their wonted favours in my tongue shall flow;
Till I know all, I'll nothing seem to know.
And from my looks exile sad discontent.
Their wonted favours in my tongue shall flow;
Till I know all, I'll nothing seem to know.
It is in moments
such as these that the play is capable of grabbing an audience (or a reader).
And this is why the play appeals to me. For all his many faults, Heywood in his
best moments can manipulate an audience like a skilful screenwriter. In the last
act, a tearful Frankford clears the house of all his wife’s effects and lingers
over her lute, recalling its harmonies. This is just like the larmoyant manner
of Beaumont and Fletcher in a play like The
Maid’s Tragedy, soliciting an audience’s tears by theatrical tricks. It
isn’t Shakespeare, but it does work.
Idiotic
footnote: “Comparisons
are odorous”, says Dogberry in Much
Ado About Nothing. I did know that Shakespeare was having fun with a saying
that was already a commonplace in his day, but it’s nice to find a contemporary
of Shakespeare proving how commonplace the saying was. In A Woman Killed With Kindness the
servant Jenkin says (I, ii), in the “comic” scene of servant revelry: “O Slime! O Brickbat! Do not you know that comparisons are
odious? Now we are odious ourselves, too; therefore there are no
comparisons to be made betwixt us.” Just thought you’d like to know.
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