I love it when Shakespeare comes up at lunch. We were talking about with a coworker who’d been in Midsummer, and I asked whether his production had been on the light and glitzy side, or touched on some of the darker bits. This might be the play that kindergarten kids get to dress up as fairies, but it’s also the play where a husband drugs his wife and sends her off to be with an animal until he gets everything he wants.
Which led to this question. I’ve seen “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” done before (and we’ve done it here), and the Macbeths often win that one. They’re made for each other.
So how about the most dysfunctional? Define that however you like.
I am going to go ahead and disqualify Othello right off the bat. If you actually kill your wife during the course of the play then it’s just too easy. And that goes for both Othello and Iago in that one. Claudius gets a pass because that was an accident.
Kate and Petruchio? Whether or not you intrepret the play’s ending as happy doesn’t necessarily mean that their relationship is a healthy one. What about the Twelfth Night couples? When you realize that the person you married isn’t the person you thought you were marrying, can you just roll with it and end up happy?