We few, we happy few…We happily married couples in the Shakespearean canon.

Warkworth Castle, home of Harry Percy ["Hotspur"] (1364/66-1403)

I’ve been watching the “Age of Kings” BBC-TV telecasts from 1960-62—truncated productions of the histories, which are well worth the Netflix rental. Despite the language which sounds high flown to most contemporary ears, the clarity is excellent, something all too rare in contemporary productions. Shakespeare's histories tend to be some of the least accessible of his plays because of all the facts being thrown at the audience and the interrelationships between myriad courtiers can be downright confusing. But the actors make every word, every intention, crystalline. It's a clinic in performance that 21st century Shakespeare companies should study with the intensity of NFL teams reviewing their upcoming Sunday rival's game tapes.

Perhaps it’s a fact of also being an actress, but the scenes I invariably find the most compelling are those between a man and a woman—and they are few and far between in the history plays. If you only know the young Sean Connery’s work as 007, his performance (in 1960) as Harry Percy, better known as Hotspur, arrives as a delight. I hadn’t realized he was in the series. What a treat it was to see him performing Shakespeare with such tremendous comprehension and élan.

One of my favorite Shakespearean scenes ever, comes in Henry IV, Part 1, (Act II, scene 3) where Harry Percy tells his wife Kate that he must leave her—without exactly telling her where he’s going. In addition to tension and anxiety, the scene is replete with playful banter. The actual Harry Hotspur was married to Elizabeth Mortimer, but Shakespeare rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Although the number of years is never stated in the text, through the way they relate to each other, we can guess that Kate and Hotspur have enjoyed a happy marriage of some duration, although they do have their issues: Kate feels neglected in the boudoir and in making her disappointment known to her husband, urges him to explain why he hasn’t wanted to make love lately. Her mention of this subject is a clue to the kind of relationship they have: this couple usually enjoys terrific (and frequent) sex. Kate realizes that something must be desperately troubling; and she's confident enough in their love to realize that the problem doesn't stem from domestic issues within the marriage, but as a result of outside pressures. As a full partner in their marriage, she demands to know the cause.

We meet the Percys in the middle of their marriage. Their courtship and wedding are long past by the time we see them. The tension and conflict in the scene does not come from the fact that they are a mismatched pair of lovers as we see in so many of Shakespeare’s comedies (and which Tracy so marvelously blogged about last week); but from the violent events that surround them and threaten (successfully, as it turns out) to tear them apart. Rebellion is in the air and Hotspur has been called to the latest front.

Kate wants to know where her husband is off to in such a hurry in the middle of the night. To protect her (as well as to keep his enterprise a secret), Hotspur refuses to tell her. The scene becomes a game to wheedle the information out of him. Kate wants to obtain it; Hostspur wants to withhold it. The couple tease, cajole, and (if it’s staged by a director who understands the text), spar with double entendres that can become sexy and physical.

HOTSPUR: What say'st thou, my lady?

LADY: What is it carries you away?

HOTSPUR: Why, my horse, my love, my horse.

LADY: Out, you mad-headed ape!

A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen

As you are toss'd with. In faith,

I'll know your business, Harry, that I will.

I fear my brother Mortimer doth stir

About his title, and hath sent for you

To line his enterprise: but if you go,--

HOTSPUR: So far a-foot, I shall be weary, love.

LADY: Come, come, you paraquito, answer me

Directly to this question that I ask:

In faith, I'll break thy little finger, Harry,

An if thou wilt not tell me true.

HOTSPUR: Away,

Away, you trifler! Love? I love thee not,

I care not for thee, Kate: this is no world

To play with mammets and to tilt with lips:

We must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns,

And pass them current too. . .

Kate then tries pouting:

LADY: Do you not love me? do you not indeed?

Well, do not, then; for, since you love me not,

I will not love myself. Do you not love me?

Nay, tell me if you speak in jest or no.

HOTSPUR: Come, wilt thou see me ride?

And when I am o' horseback, I will swear

I love thee infinitely. But hark you, Kate

I must not have you henceforth question me

Whither I go, nor reason whereabout:

Whither I must, I must; and, to conclude,

This evening must I leave you, gentle Kate.

I know you wise; but yet no further wise

Than Harry Percy's wife; constant you are;

But yet a woman: and, for secrecy,

No lady closer; for I well believe

Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know;

And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.

And then, we get another moment of physicality, which should be so sexy that we feel like we’re intruding on a private moment between the spouses.

LADY: How! so far?

HOTSPUR: Not an inch further.

Hotspur then promises Kate that she will set forth the following day and join him. The genuine love and passion they share is palpable, rare for one of Shakespeare’s warriors. Theirs is no political marriage. They tease, they tickle, they touch. Kate adores her husband, and when he is killed by Prince Hal (Harry Monmouth, the future Henry V), she is utterly bereft, and furious with her father-in-law, the Earl of Northumberland, for failing to support his son in the field, and when he finally sees the light, it is too little and far too late. The widowed Lady Percy's tirade against Northumberland in Act II, Scene 3 of Henry IV, Part 2 (remember where Lady Percy’s first big scene was in HIV Part 1!) is such a loving homage to her late husband that it breaks your heart.

LADY PERCY:

. . . by his light

Did all the chivalry of England move

To do brave acts: he was indeed the glass

Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves:

. . . so that in speech, in gait,

In diet, in affections of delight,

In military rules, humours of blood,

He was the mark and glass, copy and book,

That fashion’d others.

. . . Never, O never, do his ghost the wrong

To hold your honour more precise and nice

With others than with him! let them alone:

The marshal and the archbishop are strong:

Had my sweet Harry had but half their numbers,

To-day might I, hanging on Hotspur’s neck,

Have talk’d of Monmouth's grave.

19th c. engraving depicting Hotspur's death

William Shakespeare’s own marriage might not have been a happy one. He was eighteen in November, 1582 when he wed the twenty-six-year-old Anne Hathaway. He’d made her pregnant. The fact that he went down to London to seek his fortune and therefore lived apart from Anne is not necessarily proof of marital unhappiness; yet on the other hand, Shakespeare was the shrewdest observer of humanity, and, like every writer, he may very well have infused his writing with his own experiences. Should we be surprised that there are so few happy marriages in his plays?

What other examples of happy marriages from the Shakespearean canon come to mind?