Need an argumentative essay on Falstaff and Willmore in Shakespeare and Behn. Needs to be 6 pages. Please no plagiarism.Download file to see previous pages (A Room of One's Own)Behn's drama represents

Need an argumentative essay on Falstaff and Willmore in Shakespeare and Behn. Needs to be 6 pages. Please no plagiarism.

(A Room of One's Own)

Behn's drama represents the burgeoning feminism that asserted itself fairly early in the British tradition, and her plays represent a considerable number of marginal characters and the problems that they face.

Henry V is one of Shakespeare's historical plays, one of the series detailing the lengthy travails of the Wars of the Roses, and the conflicts between England and France. The story begins in a tense political situation: Henry IV has just passed away, and the young prince Hal has assumed the throne. The Wars of the Roses have left the populace discontented, and the new Henry V must gain the respect of a court and country that have been regaled with tales of his wild living, particularly the company he kept with drunks and thieves in the Boar's Head Tavern. And so, based on some distant roots in his family tree that connect with the French royal family, Henry lays claim to certain portions of France. The Dauphin, or crown prince, of France, is fairly rude in his reply to Henry's claims, and so Henry decides to invade France. The English nobility and clergy (not so different from the U.S. Congress and the American religious right in the initial stages of the Iraq quagmire) eagerly support the war, and so Henry makes his preparations. However, this war affects Henry's former drinking pals, whom he had to leave behind when he became king, including Bardolph, whose portrayal says much about the idealized way in which many of the members of the lowest classes were portrayed when called to duty by those above them.

The Rover is an example of a Restoration love-comedy, and indeed takes much of its plot from Thomaso, or the Wanderer, which was written by Behn's friend Thomas Killigrew. Rather than class and war, love and marriage are the themes undertaken in this play. The action takes place during Carnival in Naples, which would give an English audience a definite sense of the exotic as things got underway. In this particular play, the love-games involve Florinda, who will either marry her brother's friend, or an older rich man. Belville, the young man who rescues her from this predicament and wins her love. Hellena, Florinda's sister and a former whore who is headed for the convent. and Willmore, a young ne'er-do-well who falls in love with Hellena. While Florinda's brother is present in the play as a reluctant chaperone, there are no adults to supervise these young people, and, as one might expect, the women in the play pretty much get what they want. However, the women are the marginal characters as well, because in Behn's time, it is the women who had no choices. Their fathers, or husbands, or male guardians, provided all of their sustenance, and made all of their decisions.

Bardolph is one of the crowd at the Boar's Head that initially takes umbrage at Hal's departure for the demands of royal place. However, for Hal to become Henry V, he has to distance himself from the rough crowd with which he spends time, so that he can properly rule the country.