Still not (emotionally) done with this show, apparently.
Grendela was the first character created for The Wayward Women. Though she has the martial pride of Fluellen and the avuncular debauchery of Falstaff (Aunticular? Tantatious? Materteral?), it is decidedly Sir Toby Belch from whom the Green Knight derives most of her personage. Lecherous, treacherous, drunken, a self-congratulatory bully, handy with letters, and certainly not afraid of a brawl, the Grendel epitomizes the Jacobean phrase, “What is a knight if not a thing of blood?”
Humourism theorized that human behavior was controlled by the regulation of four fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. Too much blood in one’s system allegedly led to wild behavior, temper tantrums, over-indulgence, and debauchery. Grendela has these things in spades.
Green is the color of lust, envy, jealousy, and of course dragons and serpents. In Jacobean times, “envy” didn’t just mean resentment toward another’s possessions or good fortune; it also meant just plain hatred, pure and simple, and Grendela’s apparent hatred for Anu is an ever-present motivator. Jealousy is perhaps less overt, though one could argue she is rather possessive of her squire Quill, and that this expresses itself in her quickness to impose her own epicurean lifestyle on her student (and her quick tendency to dismiss Quill’s arguments in favor of any other philosophy). As for serpents: I’ll admit Grendela is named after the son of a dragon rather than an actual dragon, but then the dragon didn’t have a name to steal.
COSTUME by Delena Bradley
LIGHTING by Benjamin Dionysus
PHOTO by INDie Grant Productions, LLC