Sex in the City: Messina, Vienna, Troy, London -or-

Sex in the City: Messina, Vienna, Troy, London -or- ‘from the casque to the cushion’ the comic turn Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up till then there’d only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for a ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything. (from Philip Larkin, ‘Annus Mirabilis’)

For his [honour], it stuck upon him as the sun In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light Did all the chivalry of England move To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves ( Kate on Hotspur, 2 Henry IV, 2.3.18-22). My dear, dear lord, The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation. Take that away Men are but gilded loam or painted clay… Mine honour is my life. Both grow in one. Take honour from me, and my life is done (Mowbray in Richard II, 1.1.176-183) Fare well the plumed troops and the big wars That makes ambition virtue! … the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war! (Othello, 3.3.354-59) Othello’s occupation’s gone. Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore (Othello, 3.3.362-64). Yet she must die, else she’ll betray more men (Othello, 5.2.6).

‘It is held That valour is the chiefest virtue, and Most dignifies the haver.’ (Cominius in Coriolanus, 2.2.79-81) For men, then, ‘valour’ = ‘honour’ = active ‘virtue’ = state of DOING What is ‘virtue’ for women? What constitutes ‘virtue’? What constitutes female ‘honour’? Answer: a state of BEING. Honour = chastity And the loss of female honour = ? Notice: in Shakespeare, men who betray men are called traitors. Women who betray men – Emilia, for instance, betraying Iago (‘I charge you, get you home’; ‘Be wise and get you home’: ‘Perchance, Iago, I will ne’ er go home’) by telling Desdemona’s truth – are called whores (‘Villanous whore!’). Men’s betrayal is politicised. Women’s betrayal is sexualised, which is to say, that women’s sexuality is politics. And to kill a woman for adultery or ‘folly’ is to punish her failure of honour. The killing is an ‘honour’ killing, and the killer an ‘honourable murderer’ (or so Othello frames himself at the end).

An early modern paradox: Men desire, need women, depend on women, not least to ensure dynastic succession and legitimate inheritance. But men are taught to mistrust women, to suspect them. See Iago on women: ‘she must have change, she must’; ‘I know our country disposition well. In Venice …’ The ‘disposition’ of women: inconstant, carnal, insatiable, irrational, petty, deceivers, wayward, seemers. ‘She did deceive her father marrying you / And when she seemed to shake and fear your looks, / She loved them most … / She that so young could give out such a seeming …’ When they say ‘no’, they mean ‘yes’. Who says so? Men. Relationships always headed for crisis?

Questions: How do men value female honour? How do men construct the fe-male? How do men manipulate that construction to e-masculate other men and literally un-do them? Is sex (in the city) always (culturally constructed) an act ‘between men’? Is chastity an absolute value, equivalent to male honour, the ‘purest treasure mortal times afford’, so that ‘[her] honour is [her] life’? See Othello and Much Ado (‘Yet she must die’; ‘Give not this rotten orange to your friend’). Or is chastity (like Falstaff’s honour) something altogether less absolute, less prized, more negotiable, ‘commercial’, a bargaining point between men? See Measure,Troilusand Cheapside.

Absolutist male hysteria? Claudio: She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour: Behold how like a maid she blushes here! … But she is none; She knows the heat of a luxurious bed… [I mean] Not to be married, not to knit my soul To an approved wanton. (Much Ado About Nothing, 4.1.31-43) Relativist male phlegmatism? Lavatch: He that ears my land spares my team, and gives me leave to in the crop. If I be his cuckold, he’s my drudge. He that comforts my wife is the cherisher of my flesh and blood; he that loves my flesh and blood is my friend; ergo, he that kisses my wife is my friend. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage. (All’s Well that Ends Well, 1.3.39-45)

Shakespeare in the City Shakespeare writing the City Observation 1: Wherever Shakespeare takes us – Rome, Venice, Elsinore – he’s always writing about home and the present. Consider this view of pre-imperial Rome that ‘looks’ like the London of Essex’s martial progress, en route to Ireland 1599: ‘All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights / Are spectacled to see him. Your pratling nurse / Into a rapture lets her baby cry / While she chats him. The kitchen malkin pins / Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck / Clambering the walls to eye him. Stalls, bulks, windows / Are smothered up, leads filled and ridges housed / With variable complexions, all agreeing / In earnestness to see him … such a pother!’ (Coriolanus, 2.2.191-204). In Shakespeare, ‘away’ = (also) here. ‘Ago’ = (also) now.

Observation 2. In comedy, the city location produces generic affect. See for contrast the ‘green world’ ‘festive’ comedies and the ‘sea’ comedies, which deal in romantic love and which resolve to ‘wonder’ and end in ‘miracle’. City comedies talk about sex, not love. They end problematically. The ‘miracles’ feel like the work of charlatans and mountebanks. The controversies that polarise urban life remain unresolved. There’s ending without closure -- leaving a sour taste in the mouth? City as containing antithetical possibilities: splendid human achievement, dismal human failure. City problems: enclosure; over-crowding; sanitation; law and order; disease; noise; pollution; commerce. A place always already ‘fallen’, ‘corrupt’? A predatory trap? Or the highest invention of ‘artful’ mankind improving ‘nature’? (See Gail Kern Paster, Shakespeare and the Idea of the City)

Troy in Troilus and Cressida Vienna in Measure for Measure London in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside Messina in Much Ado About Nothing a transition…a household…a coming of age…a ‘boy eternal’ growing up…the story of Claudio (and another ‘boy eternal’ growing up: Benedick?)

Considering the title: • Much Ado About Nothing • Nothing = No-thing • Nothing = Noting • Claudio: Benedick, didst thou note the daughter of Signor Leonato? • Benedick: I noted her not, but I looked on her. (1.1.130-131) • A play built on scenes set up for ‘noting’, for ‘vexed looking’, a theatrical conceit constitutive of scenic structure. • If Othello is built on duologues with Iago as life coach offering counseling sessions as sex therapy, Much Ado About Nothing offers us scenes of looking, where the looking is (as in 4.1 of Othello) duped. • Othello and Much Ado as companion plays? Slander of woman as male device to destroy men?

Matthew Macfadyen as Benedick and Saskia Reeves as Beatrice in Cheek by Jowl’s Much Ado About Nothing (directed by Declan Donnellan, designed by Nick Ormerod, 1998).

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, • Men were deceivers ever; • One foot in sea, and one on shore, • To one thing constant never. • Then sigh not so, but let them go, • And be you blithe and bonny, • Converting all your sounds of woe • Into “Hey, nonny, nonny”. • Balthasar’s song, 2.3.60 as prolepsis to the duping of Benedick, ‘noting’ (he thinks) but (in truth) ‘noted’ • [‘Oh these men, these men. Dost thou think Emilia …?]

Don Pedro: Thou wilt be like a lover presently, And tire the hearer with a book of words. If thou dost love fair Hero, cherish it, And I will break with her, and with her father, And thou shalt have her… I know we shall have revelling tonight, And I will assume thy part in some disguise, And tell fair Hero I am Claudio, And in her bosom I’ll unclasp my heart And take her hearing prisoner with the force And strong encounter of my amorous tale. Then after to her father will I break, And the conclusion is, she shall be thine. In practice let us put it presently. (1.1.256 – 276)

Claudio: Thus answer I in name of Benedick, But hear these ill news with the ears of Claudio. Tis certain so. The Prince woos for himself. Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love. Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues: Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent; for Beauty is a witch Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. This is an accident of hourly proof Which I mistrusted not. Farewell, therefore, Hero! (2.1.156-167)

Claudio: Father, by your leave, Will you with free and unconstrainèd soul Give me this maid, your daughter? … And what have I to give you back whose worth May counterpoise this rich and precious gift? Don Pedro: Nothing, unless you render her again. Claudio: Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulness. There, Leonato, take her back again. Give not this rotten orange to your friend. She’s but the sign and semblance of her honour. Behold how like a maid she blushes herr! O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal! Comes not that blood as modest evidence To witness simple virtue? Would you not swear, All you that see her, that she were a maid, By these exterior shows? But she is none. She knows the heat of a luxurious bed. Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty. Leonato: What do you mean my lord? Claudio: Not to be married. Not to knit my soul to an approvèd wanton. (4.1.21-42)

Benedick: Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while? Beatrice: Yea, and I will weep awhile longer. Benedick: I will not desire that. Beatrice: You have no reason; I do it freely. Benedick: Surely I do believe your fair cousin is wronged. Beatrice: Ah, how much might the man deserve of me that would right her! Benedick: Is there any way to show such friendship? Beatrice: A very even way, but no such friend. Benedick: May a man do it? Beatrice: It is a man’s office, but not yours. Benedick: I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange? Beatrice: As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you. But believe me not – and yet I lie not. I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin. Benedick: By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me. Beatrice: Do not swear and eat it. Benedick: I will swear by it that you love me, and I will make him eat it that says I love you not. Beatrice: Will you not eat your word? Benedick: With no sauce that can be devised to it…Come, bid me do anything for thee. Beatrice: Kill Claudio. Benedick: Ha, not for the wide world. Beatrice: You kill me to deny it. Farewell. (4.1.255-290)

Benedick: Is Claudio thine enemy? Beatrice: Is a not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand until they come to take hands, and then with public accusation, uncovered slander, unmitigated rancour – O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market place. Benedick: Hear me, Beatrice. Beatrice: Talk with man out at a window – a proper saying! Benedick: Nay but Beatrice. Beatrice: Sweet Hero, she is wronged, she is slandered, she is undone. Benedick: Beat— Beatrice: Princes and counties! Surely a princely testimony, a goodly count, Count Comfit, a sweet gallant, surely. O that I were a man for his sake! Or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too. He is now as valiant as Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it. I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving. Benedick: Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand I love thee. Beatrice: Use it for my love some other way than swearing by it. Benedick: Think you in your soul the Count Claudio hath wronged Hero? Beatrice: Yea, as sure as I have a thought or a soul. Benedick: Enough. I am engaged. I will challenge him. I will kiss your hand, and so I leave you. By this hand, Claudio shall render me a dear account. As you hear of me, so think of me. Go comfort your cousin. I must say she is dead. And so, farewell. (4.2.297-329)

Sex in the City: Messina, Vienna, Troy, London -or-