THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

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humiliatingly removed in a basket of dirty linen, compromised in women’s clothing (as the ‘fat woman of Brainford’)
and, finally, equipped with the horns traditionally associated with cuckoldry, he is tormented by women and by
children disguised as fairies.
In the last scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor ruse is piled upon ruse, and exposure follows on exposure. It is
not only Falstaff who is discountenanced, for both Slender and Caius, who assume that they have assignations with
women in Windsor Forest, find themselves fobbed off instead with boys in female attire. Disguise and cross-dressing,
schemes that explode upon themselves and contrived encounters also figure prominently in the so-called ‘romantic’
comedies of Shakespeare’s middle career. In these plays, however, such festive fooling tends to be demoted to subplots
while the pains, strains, and pleasures of young love become the central concerns. Essentially, too, the successful
resolution of each play depends upon the resourcefulness of its woman protagonist. In The Merchant of Venice (c.
1596-7) Portia, who at the beginning of the action bemoans the passivity posthumously imposed on her by her father
(‘the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father’), in Act IV assumes the robes of a male advocate
and exercises her ingenious intellect in order to rescue Antonio from the dire conditions of Shylock’s bond (though in
her final dealings with Shylock she signally fails to exhibit the quality of mercy she had once advocated). In As You
Like It (c. 1599-1600) Rosalind, banished from her uncle’s court, retires to the forest of Arden disguised as a youth
named Ganymede. If the name she adopts has overtones of the epicene, the play-acting in which she indulges with
Orlando, in order to ‘cure’ him of his romantic passion for the ‘real’ Rosalind, adds to the volatility of gender in the
play. Rosalind/Ganymede assumes control not simply of Orlando’s emotional development but, gradually, of the
destinies of virtually all the temporary and permanent sojourners in Arden. Despite the ambiguity of her outward
appearance, she is triumphantly the mistress of herself; controlled, sensible, self-analytical, yet neither cold nor
phlegmatic. If at one moment she can unsentimentally anatomize human affection in a reproof to the love-sick
Orlando (‘men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky
changes when they are wives’), in another she can turn to her cousin Celia and exclaim wonderingly: ‘O coz, coz,
coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love. But it cannot be sounded. My
affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.’ Where Rosalind exercises benign authority in exile, the
shipwrecked Viola of Twelfth Night (1601) is obliged to steer a middle way between the contradictions, the
oppositions, and the displays of melancholy, spleen, and choler in the disconcerting world of Illyria. Her protective
assumption of the role of a eunuch (‘Cesario’) effectively protects her from very little; Orsino flirts languorously,
Olivia makes direct sexual advances, and the incompetent Sir Andrew Aguecheek insists on challenging her to a duel.
It is her resourceful intelligence, and not her disguise, which
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preserves her both from the affectations of blinkered lovers and from the folly, hypocrisy, and cruelty that flourishes
below stairs in Illyrian aristocratic households.
The disconcertions, tensions, and ambiguities of Illyria are to some degree mirrored in the more violent
dislocations of Messina in Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598-9). They are painfully accentuated in the so-called
‘problem' comedies, All’s Well That Ends Well (c. 1603) and Measure for Measure (1604). Much Ado About Nothing
begins with references to martial conflict, but as its plot develops it does more than refine and limit that conflict to the
battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick; it is perilously fragmented by slander, acrimony, and dishonour and
then rescrambled to allow for a somewhat insecure reconciliation in the last act. It is essentially a play about
mutuality, not serenity. Its bitter-sweetness is echoed in Balthasar’s song ‘Sigh no more, ladies’; men are deceivers,
and the much put-upon Hero seems condemned to sigh, but both its comic resolution and its comic energy ultimately
turn on the transformation of the grating of Beatrice and Benedick (the blesser and the blessed) into an agreement
between equal partners. The conversion of sounds of woe into ‘hey, nonny, nonnies’ is, however, far more uneasy in
the concluding scenes of All’s Well That Ends Well (with its sick king, its unattractive ‘hero’, and its long-suffering
and determined heroine, Helena) and of Measure for Measure (with its problematic Duke, its hypocritical Angelo,
and its prickly heroine, Isabella). Both plays rely on bed tricks so that spurned mistresses may claim lovers and both
plays force couples into relationships rather than allow relationships to be forged by mutual assent. As its title
suggests, Measure for Measure offers a series of juxtapositions rather than coalescences. Isabella’s passionate and
articulate defence of the concept of mercy in Act II is Shakespeare’s most probing statement about the difficulty and
consequences of judgement, but Isabella can be seen as arguing here as much from untried ideals as from an
instinctive or acquired wisdom. Elsewhere, her idealism suggests a naïvety about herself a nd about the shortcomings
of others. Measure for Measure is a play of dark corners, hazy margins, and attempts at rigid definition. It poses the
necessity of passing moral judgement while demonstrating that all judgement is relative.