A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare- Q Is For Mistress Quickly And Queen

 

Mistress Quickly And Falstaff. Public Domain.

Mistress Quickly is the proprietor of the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap, where Prince Hal and his friends, including Falstaff, hang out in Henry IV Part 1. This is, I think, her first appearance, but she is in a number of other plays, including Henry IV Part 2, Henry V and The Merry Wives Of Windsor.

She is a comical character, who utters a lot of malapropisms and is annoyed at Falstaff for calling her a woman. The first time you see her she is telling him off for owing her a lot of money. However, the speech she makes in Henry V, describing Falstaff’s death, is quite poignant.

She is married in the first play, but presumably is widowed by Henry V, because she has married Pistol, one of the Boar’s Head gang. 

The role has been played by some well known actresses such as Julie Walters in The Hollow Crown and Judi Dench in the Kenneth Branagh Henry V. It is a plum role for a middle-aged actress.

There are a lot of Queens in Shakespeare’s plays, so I will stick to one, Gertrude from Hamlet.

Gertrude is, of course, Hamlet’s mother. She loves him, really she does, but she has, in his opinion, committed a crime in marrying his uncle, Claudius, so soon after his father’s death, and that’s before he finds out his father was murdered. He isn’t crazy about Claudius in the first place and doesn’t understand why she would marry the inferior brother after having his father. There is, though, no real indication that she knew about the murder. 

In the Franco Zeffirelli production, starring Mel Gibson, the role was played by a relatively young Glenn Close, due to the theory that Gertrude would probably have been married young, as women were in those days. While it’s possible, we know that Hamlet is thirty because the Gravedigger reminisces about a battle Hamlet’s father won on the day he was born, thirty years ago. So Gertrude would be, at best, in her mid forties.  

Julie Christie played the role in the Kenneth Branagh version. She was in her fifties at the time. 

Wayne and Schuster did a Hamlet skit, “All In The Royal Family”, in which Gertrude talks like the character from All In The Family, telling us that “my son Hamlet is coming home from college!” It was a very funny skit, but the only one I could find on YouTube was dubbed into Spanish! 

As per usual for a Shakespeare tragedy, the stage in covered in bodies in the last scene, including that of Gertrude, who has drunk poisoned wine her husband has put out for Hamlet. 

Let’s stop here and see what tomorrow brings!