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CRITICAL<br />
‘THEN DRAW THE CURTAINES AGAINE’: THE STRANGE<br />
CASE OF GOOD DUKE HUMPHREY (OF WILLIAM<br />
SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY VI, PART TWO)<br />
Dr. Filip Krajnik, Durham University<br />
Filip Krajník h<strong>as</strong> recently gained his PhD in English Literature at Durham University (UK). The topic of his<br />
dissertation is the dramatic rôles of sleep and dreams in Shakespeare’s plays; among his research interests is<br />
the social, intellectual and cultural history of dreaming from antiquity to the early-modern period. He h<strong>as</strong> also<br />
translated a number of English and American works of fiction into Czech and is a lecturer in literary translation<br />
at the English Department at Palacký University, Olomouc (Czech Republic).<br />
ABSTRACT<br />
The image of a sleeping character on stage had a special dramatic significance for mediaeval and early-modern<br />
playwrights and audiences, often playing a crucial rôle in the dramaturgical plane of the play in question.<br />
William Shakespeare seems to have been particularly fond of <strong>this</strong> trope, having used it numerous times<br />
throughout his dramatic career. The present paper discusses the very first instance of the topos in<br />
Shakespeare’s canon – the murder of Duke Humphrey in his bed in 2 Henry VI. Special attention is paid to two<br />
distinct versions of the scene (Quarto and Folio), whose relationship h<strong>as</strong> not been unanimously agreed upon by<br />
literary criticism. The author argues that, while the Quarto version seems to be the original work of early<br />
Shakespeare, the Folio variant is dramatically superior and more consistent with the use of the topos in<br />
Shakespeare’s later – and more mature – works.<br />
---<br />
When, at the beginning of the l<strong>as</strong>t scene of Othello, the eponymous protagonist, with a lamp in his hand,<br />
approaches the bed in his own bedroom and draws back its curtain, he stays petrified for a moment and the<br />
dramatic action of the play temporarily ce<strong>as</strong>es. He had expected – even desired – to find what he h<strong>as</strong> just found,<br />
yet the view fills him with almost sacred awe and makes him once more question the intention with which he<br />
came. The flow of dramatic time h<strong>as</strong>, <strong>as</strong> it were, stopped, and the audience is left to observe how Othello, having<br />
exchanged rage for scopophilic lust, observes his wife (and victim-to-be), Desdemona. The inner dilemma<br />
which Othello h<strong>as</strong> to resolve within the limited space of twenty-two lines of his soliloquy (and Desdemona’s<br />
sleep) is no less grave than the dilemma pervading the entire plot of the play: the way from ‘Yet I’ll not shed her<br />
blood’ (V.2.3) to ‘Yet she must die’ (V.2.6) is just <strong>as</strong> arduous <strong>as</strong> the way from the affectionate ‘Excellent wretch’<br />
(III.3.91) to the hateful ‘lewd minx’ (III.3.478), <strong>as</strong> he calls Desdemona at various stages of the ‘temptation<br />
scene,’ the longest scene of the piece. 1 The beginning of the bedroom scene, therefore, becomes a means of reenacting<br />
the whole conflict of the play before it can finally be resolved. When Othello finally announces that<br />
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