Word: bertrams
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...trouble, though, was that Shakespeare, drawing on an episode in Boccaccio's Decameron. foisted on us a plot that is at once preposterous and poorly constructed. To which we must add that his heroine, Helena, lacks motivation, and his supposed hero. Bertram, lacks all semblance of virtue...
Consider the skeleton on which Shakespeare has hung his play. Helena is the orphaned ward of the Countess of Roussillon, and is in love with the Countess' son Bertram, who is above her in station. When he goes to the King's court, she follows. The King has been pronounced incurably ill, but Helena promises to cure him in return for the hand of any lord she chooses. The King recovers in two days, and she picks Bertram, who wants none of her. He is forced to marry her, but leaves at once to fight in the Italian wars...
...hard. At the same time she ought to be more careful about preserving the vodsound in words like "issue" and "duty." But these are minor flaws in a most attractive performance. No more than any other Helena, however, can she make us understand why she is in love with Bertram, beyond the fact that she likes "his arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls...
...Bertram is, to be blunt, a scurvy scamp-hardly a model of what a hero ought to be. Yet people go on trying to defend the indefensible. Dr. Johnson hit the nail on the head two centuries ago when he wrote: "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram-a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate; when she is [reportedly] dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed...
...from Maiden. Greene's dimly tragic nephew is Henry Pulling, an unmarried London bank manager who has retired to look after his dahlias. His comic aunt is Miss Augusta Bertram, who at 75 concedes that her life expectancy may be only 25 years. She is far from maiden. Nephew first meets her at the cremation of his mother. The ashes are intended for a tasteful urn among his dahlias, but somehow, in the overpowering presence of Augusta, Henry leaves the urn behind in his aunt's apartment. He is only reminded of his dead mother by a chance...