The Performance of Religion by Cia Sautter

Author:Cia Sautter [Sautter, Cia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Christianity, Literature & the Arts, Performing Arts, Theater, General
ISBN: 9781351999564
Google: h_jiDQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-01-12T03:24:53+00:00

4

All’s well

Choice, responsibility, and dialogue

All’s well that ends well yet,

Though time seem so adverse and means unfit.

– Helena (All’s Well That Ends Well, V.i)

Introduction

Stories of smart girls intrigue me as a bright woman. Somehow, even today it doesn’t really seem to be acceptable to be a smart female, and patriarchy is still entrenched in culture. This was not so in stories of clever women I read as a child. In folk and fairy tales from around the world, heroines faced difficulties, but in the end triumphed and were appreciated. When translated for modern audiences though, the heroines of such stories never seem to be functional, smart women. Until recently, for example, Disney versions of fairy tales required the heroine to seek outside assistance. Queen Esther of the Bible is somewhat of a Jewish version of the wise and beautiful girl who saves the day. In too many synagogue Purim Spiels, though, she becomes a vapid beauty rather than a clever and brave woman. One of my favorite fictional characters, Irene Adler, also fares badly in modern interpretation. She outwits Sherlock Holmes in the original story “Scandal in Bohemia,” and is the only person to ever do so. Arthur Conan Doyle portrays her as clever, kind, bohemian, and slightly outside the law, yet on film she is often depicted as an evil bank robber, murderer, or even recently a selfish dominatrix.1

This is why Helena is a surprising heroine in Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well. She is a smart young woman who goes through a much more difficult time than many of the women in other tales. She is very unappreciated by her new husband, even though she proved a remarkable woman, performing a medical miracle. Then by the end of the play she supposedly dies and comes back to life, and in the process, solves the problems of her in-laws, her new friend Diana, and Diana’s mother. Then again, her husband Bertram caused much of the disruptions and woes of these people; in the end he repents of his rejection of Helena. The smart girl triumphs!

A play performed at the Globe Theatre as part of its year of “Shakespeare and the Bible,” All’s Well wasn’t actually billed as a feature play for this particular theme; however to me it seemed a bit of an old miracle play, where a saint did something spectacular enough to be called a miracle. It also seemed a bit of a morality play, and there was decidedly a strong taste of a mystery play in the death and resurrection of Helena. When researching this drama, I was also preparing my own performance on an update of an Elijah story. This folktale cycle relates how the prophet Elijah travels through time and space to aid those in need. In part, these tales are Jewish miracle stories. Since Elijah never dies, he is free to wander through time and space aiding those in need. My story was entitled Her Wisdom is Her Beauty. It is essentially the

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