Claudio, Bertram, and A Note on Interpretation

Abstract

[ dT was a pleasure to find in the winter, i956, issue of Shakespeare Quarterly Albert Howard Carter's defense of Bertram in All's Well that Ends Well,' for it showed that Professor Carter had been able to carry out an intensive analysis of the play without completely losing sight of Shakespeare's :Estory of a virtuous young woman winning a desirable husband. This is a sizable achievement. Far more than the Romantic critics, we of today are likely to let Shakespeare's basic narrative patterns go by the board while we establish theses of our own. One's appreciation of Professor Carter's study was somewhat qualified, however, by the feeling that he was working extremely hard to establish a rather simple point. He found it necessary to discover flaws in Helena; to envision Bertram as an adolescent trying to assert his own individuality against the suffocating pressure of older people; to suggest a Freudian element in the Countess' love for her son-all this and much more to prove that the hero of a Shakespearian comedy is a decent enough chap for the heroine to marry! Considering what has gone on among Shakespeare's interpreters for some five generations, one can scarcely blame Professor Carter for his approach. Yet the Elizabethan like any other dramatist did set up obvious signs for character interpretation that he who runs may read with accuracy, even though without the fully rounded understanding and appreciation which comes of old acquaintance; and it would seem simpler, as well as safer, to follow them. To illustrate this point, I should like to take an instance of misconception still more flagrant than that of Bertram. Then I should like to return briefly to that gentleman and Helena, and after that to suggest a moral. First, as point d'appui, I offer the curious case of Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. We shall all agree that Claudio is an uninteresting figure. We read and periodically revive the play because of Beatrice and Benedick, Dogberry and Verges. Yet we shall doubtless agree, too, that the main plot of the play is that of Claudio and Hero. Now in this action the young male protagonist, after certain difficulties, acquires the beautiful girl; and the curious thing is that he is likely to receive from critics the same sort of treatment as Bertram, though in milder form. Though he is never considered very seriously these days, he is attacked as a poor thing, more or less despicable. T. M. Parrott summed him up thus: