|
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Board
of Directors:
John
R. Harris, Ph.D.
Executive
Director
Thomas
F. Bertonneau, Ph.D.
Secretary
Helen
R. Andretta, Ph.D.
York
College-CUNY
Ralph
S. Carlson, Ph.D.
Azusa
Pacific University
Kelly
Ann Hampton
Michael
H. Lythgoe
Lt.
Col. USAF (Retd.)
|
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Praesidium 8.4
(Fall 2008)
CONTENTS
A
Few Words from the Editor
Measure,
for Measure: The Bible Contra Puritanical Christianity
Michael
Sugrue
The play that Shakespeare penned just before King
Lear is often slipped into the “problem” file and then
forgotten; but, when the mutilations of Puritan censors are discounted,
it may be the greatest opus of the West’s greatest playwright.
The Feminine Figure in Painting
Peter
T. Singleton
Ever since a feminist instructor had Goya’s Naked
Maja removed from her classroom, the friction between
representations of feminine beauty in visual art and politically correct
dogma has come shockingly unveiled.
Messages to
the French: The Six Radio Broadcasts
of
Jules Romains to His Countrymen in Occupied
France
from
1940 to 1941
Translated
by John R. Harris
One of France’s greatest literary figures of the
twentieth century’s first half challenged his countrymen from a
self-imposed exile to rediscover their cultural ideals—an exhortation
that echoes hauntingly today.
The Shulamite (poem)
David
Z. Crookes
Virus
Scan (poem)
Alan
McGinnis
Laestrygonia
(short
story)
J.
S. Moseby
Another postmodern story in search of a storyline?
Perhaps… but the story’s elements are compelling rather than
playful, and their refusal to coalesce belongs to a social and moral
crisis rather than an aesthetic parlor game.
To make a donation, address your check or money order to The
Center for Literate Values or to John
Harris (NOT to Praesidium) and
post to:
Praesidium
c/o John Harris, Editor
2707 Patriot Drive
Tyler
TX,
75701
Or use the PayPal option at our "Make
a Donation" link
*****
A
Few Words from the Editor
I have taught Measure for Measure for years in my World Lit Survey (through the
Renaissance) class. Although
some of my colleagues doubt my judgment (or my sanity), I think it a
very good fit. Teaching Hamlet
or King Lear in a survey
format is wildly ambitious, and the
BBC
happens to have produced a very fine rendition of M for M not too long ago (with Kate Nelligan ideal in the role of
Isabella). The play
compellingly represents the collision of a medieval value system
(personified in Isabella) with a self-righteous progressivism (Angelo)
overseen by a humane but vacillant puzzlement (Duke Vincentio).
The heroine is a strong and complex figure of the sort that
female students long for but seldom find before the printing press, and
her plight is nothing less contemporary than a five-alarm case of sexual
harassment.
Michael Sugrue would probably take exception to some elements of
my estimate above—and I may, indeed, revise that estimate after having
read his stunning essay (especially my view of Vincentio, who turns out
to have stronger knees than first appears).
I would hope that his argument would persuade our readers at
least to reconsider the play if they have tended to disparage it in the
past, and perhaps even to join us two in rating it a masterpiece.
Sometimes Praesidium has strayed a little farther from literary subjects than
our board members would have liked.
The Center’s objective is not to create a strictly literary
journal—for there are plenty of those already, and most are far too
literary in that they are only read by graduate students and Ph.D.s with
whose narrow interests they coincide.
Our mission, rather, is to re-awaken the love of literature, and
of creativity generally, among a vast but thoughtful public besieged
ever more heavily and seduced ever more artfully by flashy, debased, and
debasing electronic amusements. Yet
in pursuing this mission, we sometimes veer so far into issues of a
political tinge (or at least a very broadly cultural one) that
literature per se is elbowed
off the table. It must all
come back to reading, for our humble terrestrial endeavor.
Anything can be done by the grace of God, but we puny mortals at
The Center claim an engineer’s share in no higher mystery than the
self-deprecating awe inspired by a grandly conceived, intricately
executed design. Beauty and
wonder do not necessarily make people better, but people who live
without beauty and wonder have a much reduced chance of being good.
French novelist and playwright Jules Romains would have
agreed—yet my own salute to Romains is, in fact, not literary but
veers, once again, toward the political.
Like any devoted student of Western culture, I have been
chagrined throughout my adult life at the decline of
France
. The ilk of Michel Tournier
has given the twentieth century’s second half a very poor showing
against profound novelists of its first half like Romains and his
friend, Roger Martin du Gard—and one unedited passage from Pascal has
more genuine irony of a more mature caliber than the collected works of
Derrida. I fear that my
praise of the tradition represented by Romains actually pulls the rug
out from under the exhortations he broadcast by radio to his countrymen
in Occupied France during the early forties.
Romains thought that the old embers need only be stirred to
resuscitate culture’s bonfire. It
didn’t exactly work that way… but the sentiments expressed in his
appeals are so noble that they deserve to be translated and made widely
known—again, and perhaps now more than ever; for the embers are cooler
than ever, and they smolder not just in
France
but throughout the Western world.
Peter Singleton’s celebration of female beauty in painting (a
very literary kind of celebration, as he points out) bridges the gap
between airy idealism and artistic representation, nor does it entirely
ridicule misgivings of the puritanical kind which were Shakespeare’s
probable target in Measure for
Measure. I can well
imagine Angelo confiscating Goya’s Naked
Maja in a high lather of indignation and then hanging it over his
bed, having sent a substitute canvas to be burned.
Yet the issue is not quite so simple as freedom of expression
versus priggish philistinism, after all, as anyone with children
realizes. In a “culture”
one of whose defining images must surely be a pornographic
representation of the female body, art must acknowledge a duty to seek
after idealism. Singleton
argues (with complete justice, I believe) that academic feminism has
been wrong—and even rather destructive—in begrudging our cultural
tradition a tendency to place women on pedestals.
He remains very suspicious, however, of the postmodern’s phony
idealism, more interested (“playfully”, as it maintains) in the
Virgin’s breast than in the baby suckling thereat.
We
have always been able to maintain our pledge (sometimes just barely) to
include a short story and/or a poem in every issue—our way of trying
to resuscitate the creative spirit from both the active and the
contemplative end, as you might say.
This time we have made good on that pledge exceptionally well.
Read, think, enjoy, brood… and read some more.
Do not fear to study the clouds: they’re often the most
beautiful thing in the visible sky.
~ J. H.
back to Contents
***************************
The
Bible Contra Puritanical Christianity
Michael
Sugrue
“…the
real dramatist of forgiveness is and remains Shakespeare.”
Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama
Like human life itself, Measure for
Measure is a very serious comedy. Like
the Bible, Measure for Measure is a
comedy of cosmic proportions. Taken
together, the Old and New Testaments comprise the only other comedy of
comparable seriousness, and Shakespeare’s play, although less detailed, is far
more compact and economical. Measure
for Measure and the Bible are paradoxically self explanatory; both works
reflexively talk about themselves and their shared hidden meanings.
As it is written, “…all this was done, that the scriptures of the
prophets might be fulfilled” (Matthew 26:56).
In the beginning of Measure for Measure (1.1. 56-58), the Duke artfully informs us,
“…We shall write to you, / As time, and our concerning shall importune, /
How it goes with us, and doe you looke to know / What doth befall you here…”
The writings which the Duke sends may be called the Bible, the knowledge
of what “doth befall you here” referring to the events which occur
“here” in Vienna, “here” on Earth, and “here” in the play.
Measure for Measure is an intellectual tour de force that encompasses art, politics, ethics, and religion
in a theatrical allegory of the human condition.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of the Bible for the
interpretation of Measure for Measure. The
play might be thought of as an extended meditation on Jesus’ statement in John
8:7, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” and on Paul’s
admonition in Romans 2:22, “Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery,
dost thou commit adultery? Thou that
abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?” Although
many books of the Bible are borrowed from, the books most frequently employed
are the Synoptic gospels and the epistle of Paul to the Romans.
The plot of Measure for Measure
reformulates what might be called the eschatological “absent master”
parables in the synoptic gospels.
The master leaves, the servants misbehave, the master returns, and he
punishes the guilty while relieving the oppressed.
Compare 1.1.26-40 to Matthew 25:14-15: “For the kingdom of heaven is as
a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered
unto them his goods. And unto one he
gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to
his several ability; and straightway took his journey.”
The talents given to puritanical Angelo are the greatest of all.
The properly Christian response to the sanctimonious severity of
Puritanism is alluded in the title: “Judge not, that ye shall not be judged.
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye?”
A close examination will reveal scores of Biblical motifs, borrowings,
parallels, inversions and paraphrases.
The complexity and variety of the motifs in Measure
for Measure can be unified by an examination of the reticulated Biblical
themes that inform the play. In
3.1.521-3 when the Duke explicitly condemns Angelo’s behavior, he says,
“Shame to him whose cruell striking/ Kils for faults of his owne liking:/
Twice trebble shame on Angelo.” Those
who are familiar with Biblical numerology will understand “twice treble”
shame: six is the number of evil. Shakespeare
is hoisting the Puritans on their own petard, using the Bible and its symbols to
expose the corruption of its seeming defenders.
The boldness of Shakespeare’s response to Puritanism is very thinly
veiled in allegory, which is in all probability why it was given such a repeated
and severe editorial beating. Even
the comic relief in Measure for Measure
is gilded with Biblical references. In
4.2.2-4, when Abhorson asks Pompey “…can you cut off a man’s head?”
Pompey replies, “If the man be a Bachelor, Sir, I can: but if he be a
married man, he’s his wive’s head, / And I can never cut off a woman’s
head.” This low comedy is derived
from a high source, the Pauline epistles.
Measure for Measure invites the
reader to carefully reread the Bible as a necessary first step in decoding and
appreciating the play. There are
hints to this effect in the play itself. Beginning
with the title, which is taken from the synoptic gospels, strange Christian
images [“Looke, / th’unfolding Starre calls up the Shepheard….”
(4.2.199-200)] crop up for no obvious reason.
Unexpectedly, Biblical references such as 1.2.7-15, in which Lucio
discusses the sanctimonious pirate who eliminated one commandment from the
Decalogue, create a religious resonance unique among Shakespeare’s plays.
The depth of this play and the extent of its aspirations cannot be made
apparent without a historically contextualized reconstruction of the damaged Measure
for Measure text. Such a
reconstruction requires a familiarity with English history.
It also requires a knowledge of scripture, which Shakespeare had, which
his Puritan antagonists had and which Shakespeare’s audience also had.
Measure for Measure makes
greater demands on a contemporary reader than any other comedy, but the
unexpected profundity of Shakespeare’s achievement makes the effort well
justified. As the Duke explains
gnomically in 4.2. 200-202, “…put not / yourself into amazement how these
things should be; / All difficulties are but easie when they are knowne.”
It is important to note that the Duke states of Lord Angelo that “…we
have with speciall soule / Elected him…” (1.1.18-19) and that Angelo is
“precise” (1.4.50). The Puritans
regarded themselves as the spiritually “elect”.
In seventeenth century usage, a “Precisian” was a synonym for
“Puritan”. In a reference to
Matthew 7:9 and Luke
11:11
, the Duke explains that he has returned
disguised as a Friar because Angelo “ … scarce confesses / That his blood
flowes: or that his appetite / Is more to bread than stone: hence we see / If
power change purpose: what our Seemers be” (1.4.51-4).
In Shakespeare’s time, Puritans were agitating for moral and political
reform that entailed (among other things) the destruction of theatres.
They proposed the abolition of drama for the same reason Angelo orders
the brothels of
Vienna
destroyed: they were promoting public lewdness.
Stephen Gosson’s 1579 tract against theatre, The
School of Abuse, was the first of many Puritan diatribes against the
immorality of drama in the Elizabethan age.
The Puritan preacher Philip Stubbes stated the party line in his tract
against theatre, Anatomy of Abuses (1583): “Do they not maintain bawdry, insinuate
foolery, and renew the remembrance of heathen idolatry?
Do they not induce whoredom and uncleanness?
Nay, are they not rather plain devourers of maidenly virginity and
chastity?”
Advocates of drama were considerably less numerous that the critics.
Sir Philip Sidney wrote a response to the charges leveled by Puritans in
his Defense of Poesie but withheld it
from publication for fifteen years, perhaps because he feared the political
repercussions. This work was written
in 1583 but not published until 1598, when it generated a firestorm of political
and religious controversy. The
conflict between the advocates and critics of drama was still raging in 1604
when Shakespeare made his allegorical contribution to the dispute.
In Measure for Measure
Shakespeare is vindicating the theatre by criticizing the proud, merciless
hypocrisy of Puritanism. Angelo, the
archetype of Puritanical arrogance and self deception, is Shakespeare’s retort
to their moral indictment of drama. As
Angelo says, “…most dangerous / Is that temptation that doth goad us on / To
sinne in loving vertue” (2.3.184-6). Using
the Bible as a template, in Measure for
Measure Shakespeare uses drama to hold up vice to ridicule and attempts to
improve rather than debase public morals. This
play exactly instantiates the argument
Sidney
had made in the Defense
of Poesie six years earlier. Shakespeare’s
play is sufficiently candid not to suggest that theatre is unconnected with
sexual sin, but rather points out that such sin is ubiquitous.
As the Provost says, “All Sects, all Ages smack of this vice…”
(2.2.5). Sexual desire is intrinsic
to human nature and some degree of transgression is ineradicable.
As Lucio cleverly says (3.1.364-6), “…the vice is of a great kindred:
/ it is well allied; but it is impossible to extirp it quite, / Friar, till
eating and drinking be put downe…”
A reading of Measure for Measure that is not informed by English history and
Biblical literature is a dreadful experience.
Without such background, Measure
for Measure is not merely a “problem play”: it is opaque, formless,
diffuse, chaotic. Characters that
are by turns irritating, repulsive, and incomprehensible are sentenced to
comedic hard labor in an ill-constructed, painfully unfunny plot containing a
miscellany of irrelevant, implausible events capped off by a deus ex machina. Consider
the character of Marianna. She was
slandered and fraudulently jilted in an engagement five years ago by Angelo, who
is now a political appointee sexually blackmailing a novice nun.
This is hardly hilarious, and it gets worse.
A Friar, who is really a disguised Duke, but whom Marianna nonetheless
knows well, comes to her and asks if she would consent to a silent nocturnal
defloration by her former fiancé who will believe that she is the ill-treated
nun. Marianna promptly agrees.
If this is intended to realistically represent human actions and the
workings of the human psyche, this meandering absurdity is surely the worst play
Shakespeare ever wrote.
Other,
equally suspicious oddities of characterization abound.
Isabella, for example, is a novice nun whose devotion to Christianity is
so complete that she is willing to sacrifice her brother’s life and her own
rather than commit mortal sin. She
would choose death before damnation and accept martyrdom rather than betray
God’s moral injunctions. This
makes it very hard to understand Isabella when she asked Angelo to mollify his
severity and spare her brother’s life. She
says (2.2.112-3), “Could great men thunder / As Jove himself do’s, Jove
would never be quiet….”
Jove, who sentenced Prometheus to have his liver torn out and eaten by
vultures on a daily basis, is a puzzling point of reference in a colloquy about
mercy. Why does Isabella, with her
unshakeable Christian piety, explain divine mercy with reference to the head of
the Roman pantheon, a god in whom neither she nor Angelo believes?
The
structure of the plot is, if possible, even worse.
Consider Act 4 Scene 5, a minor miracle of dramatic incoherence.
This scene is one of the shortest in any Shakespearean play, a mere
thirteen lines long. The Duke speaks
ten of these lines to Friar Peter, giving him letters and telling him to notify
Flavius, Valentinus, Rowland and Crassus of his location and to bring trumpets
to the city gate. The Friar exits.
Varrius enters and the Duke says, “I thank thee Varrius, thou has made
good haste.” Varrius does not
reply. Perhaps he is out of breath
because in his haste he has failed to show up for any of the earlier scenes in
the play. His absence from the
earlier action will be artfully balanced by his lack of speech or action in any
of the subsequent scenes. The
spectator may wonder, what is the point of this superfluous character?
Who is Varrius? What is he
doing here? The answer, it seems, is
that Varrius is doing the same thing Flavius, Valentinus, Rowland and Crassus
are doing: nothing. In the text of Measure for Measure that we
have, Shakespeare introduces in a mere thirteen lines five previously unknown
characters who do not say or do anything in the remainder of the play.
This anticipates Pirandello: instead of Six Characters in Search of an
Author, we have Five Characters in Search of a Purpose. The next scene (4.6) is
almost equally brief (15 lines) and then the single climactic scene in Act 5
ends the play.
If Shakespeare actually wrote the imbecile (4.5) as we have it, perhaps
the Earl of Oxford or Francis Bacon or somebody really did write the other
plays. The hand that wrote Romeo
and Juliet and The Tempest did not produce this
nonsense.
The closer one examines the language of Measure
for Measure, the more numerous, obvious and vexing the textual problems
become. What, for example, does it
mean twice to describe Friar Lodowick, (really the Duke in disguise) as being
“ghostly”? In 4.3.45, Abhorson
the executioner says, “Looke you sir, heere comes your ghostly father.”
It is easy enough to understand how Hamlet’s father might be thought of
as ghostly, but in what sense is the Friar ghostly?
Why does the Duke in 5.1.128 describe the Friar as “a ghostly father
belike: / Who knowes that Lodowick?” since after all he himself is the Friar
but he is not at all ghostly? Other
utterances are equally mysterious. The
Provost greets Angelo in 2.2.25 with the line, “’Save your honor.”
Isabella offers Angelo the same strange salutation a little later in (2.2 165).
“’Save your honor.” What sense
is to be attached to this? It makes
no sense to interpret this as an imperative sentence, since neither the Provost
nor Isabella is in a position to issue orders to Angelo, nor is his honor in
jeopardy. Yet, if it is not an
imperative sentence, then it is not a sentence at all.
The ubiquitous Christian themes, (sin, grace, confession, repentance,
blessing, judgement, nuns, friars, etc.) are not at all funny, and the oddly
serious tone of Measure for Measure is
quite disconcerting. Despite the
best efforts of Pompey, Elbow, Barnardine, Abhorson, Lucio and Mistress Overdone
to provide a counterpoint of comic relief, Measure
for Measure creates a mood of perplexity and leaden anticipation.
It is such a grim comedy that some critics have been tempted to describe
it as a “problem play” rather than a comedy at all.
Measure for Measure is indeed
problematical, but not for the reasons usually given.
No less a critic than Dr. Johnson noted two centuries ago that “there
is perhaps not one of Shakespeare’s plays more darkened than this by the
peculiarities of the author and the unskillfulness of its editors, by
distortions of phrase or negligence of transcription.”
With all due respect to Dr. Johnson, the problems of Measure
for Measure are not Shakespeare’s, and the negligence of transcription
actually helps the reconstruction of the play.
The textual problems of Measure for
Measure are the product of later Puritanical censorship.
The conceptual problems are the product of divine intervention, or, more
precisely, the apparent lack of divine intervention.
Measure for Measure is saturated in religious references, yet in
slightly more than 2700 lines, the word “God” never appears in the text of Measure
for Measure as we have it from the First Folio.
Only after God is reintroduced and the text of the play is reconstructed
can the form and content of Measure for
Measure be rendered intelligible. Measure for Measure is like the Silenus statue in Plato’s Symposium.
Only after the text is reconstituted can we view the sacred images hidden
within the coarse, profane exterior.
Despite its apparent defects, Measure
for Measure is in fact the greatest comedy ever written.
Its intellectual ambitions are enormous and its subtlety is often too
subtle for many contemporary literary critics.
Measure for Measure is a
five-act synopsis of all human history as it is represented in the Bible: in
that respect it is permanently timeless. Within
its time it is a polemic against Puritanism and its self-righteous, highly
tendentious interpretation of scripture. It
is moreover a moral justification of comedy and tragedy in dramatic form, a
vindication of theatre against its Puritan opponents, who sought (eventually
with success) to close all theatres and completely abolish drama in
England
on moral grounds.
The historical context of Measure
for Measure is revealing. Shakespeare
was already a prominent playwright when Puritanical reformers attempted to ban
drama for political and moral reasons. In
1597, the Privy Council had issued an order prohibiting plays and requiring the
destruction of theatres already built. “Her
majesty being informed that there are very great disorders committed in common
playhouses both by lewd matters that are handled and by resort and confluence of
bad people…no plays shall be used in
London
or about the city… also those playhouses that
are erected and built only for such purposes shall be plucked down.”
Several contemporary theatre owners, such as Philip Henslowe and John
Alleyn, also owned brothels, and the theatrical community surely understood that
a threat to one was a threat to the other.
Just before the production of Measure
for Measure, in 1603, the brothels of
London
had been ordered closed to prevent the spread
of disease by “dissolute and idle persons”.
Although the restrictions against theatres and brothels were eventually
relaxed, given the rising power of Puritanism, the status of both remained
precarious. This presented
Shakespeare with a problem and an opportunity.
The unctuous self-righteousness of puritanical killjoys is a very apt
target for satire, but this could easily backfire.
Any overtly profane, scurrilous or bawdy attack on Puritanism would be
represented by Shakespeare’s opponents as an attack on religion and moral
decency, thereby strengthening the Puritan’s argument against theatre.
Shakespeare needed to use an intellectual rapier, not a bludgeon.
His inspired decision to formulate his attack on Puritanism in the form
of a Biblical allegory is a stroke of genius, the lethal theatrical analogue of
Laertes’ poisoned foil.
The first known production of Measure
for Measure was at the Royal Court on
December 26, 16
04. Earlier
in that same year, Puritan spokesmen, intending to enact Mosaic law, had
unsuccessfully attempted to have adultery, defined as “ravishing anyone’s
wife, fiancé or daughter”, made a felony, which would make it a capital
offense.
In 1650, during the Puritan revolution, adultery eventually was made a
capital offense. Given the state of
contemporary politics, the references to the increasing strictness of laws
against fornication would be understood by everyone in the audience.
Since Measure for Measure was
originally a part of royal Christmas festivities of 1604, the relevance of
Christian ideas and images to the play is easy to discern.
Since Puritans disdained Christmas as a “Popish” holiday, this was an
apt time to present an attack on Puritanism.
It is possible that some influential members of the audience who
comprehended the allegory may have been offended by the representation of
Angelo, the loathsome, hypocritical deputy.
The play was decidedly unpopular, and there is no record of Measure
for Measure being performed again before the ban on theatre in 1642 during
the Puritan Revolution. A little
more than a year after the only known production of Measure
for Measure, the rising power of Puritanical reformers was made manifest
when in May 1606 Parliament made illegal the use of God’s name on stage.
No doubt, the legal enforcement of the Third Commandment impeded thinly
veiled political and religious criticism as well as theatrical blasphemy.
Shakespeare’s editors and publishers seem to have reacted with a flurry
of censorial activity, deleting oaths, expurgating prayers, and cutting segments
in which God’s name cannot simply be replaced with some other term.
It is generally accepted that all First Folio plays derived from Ralph
Crane’s editing have been censored of oaths.
Because of its profusion of Biblical references and overtly religious
themes, the redaction of Measure for
Measure must have taxed the intellectual capacities of Crane (and other
editors as well). Indeed, Measure
for Measure taxed them beyond their capacities.
In one particularly noteworthy case, an editor made a revealing
mistake. In
2.4.4-5, Angelo says, “… Heaven in my mouth / As if I did only but chew his name.” The problem
here is not that Shakespeare did not understand English grammar.
The problem is that a careless editor changed the word God
to Heaven without changing the corresponding pronoun.
“His” tells a tale. Some,
perhaps all, of the references to “Heaven” in the play were originally
references to “God” which were later censored.
There are forty-six such references.
Before censorship, Isabella’s absurd references to “Jove” when
asking mercy of Angelo were certainly references to “God”.
In our text of Measure for Measure,
when the Provost and Isabella salute Angelo with, “’Save your honor,” the
statement is gibberish. If the
original read, “God save your
honor,” then it is perfectly comprehensible.
There were originally many references to God in the original version of Measure
for Measure that were later censored for political reasons.
There may originally have been scores of invocations of “God” because
there are hints that the text contains other changes wrought by editorial
oversights. For example, the content
of Duke’s speech in 3.1.442-5 seems to be repeated in the Duke’s speech in
4.1.158-63, which may indicate that one of them is a patch sewn on to cover an
editorial elision.
In addition, the legacy of censorship apparent in the text of Measure for Measure as we have it should inform our understanding of
the structure of the play. It is
worth suggesting that Act 4, scenes 5 and 6, which taken together only amount to
28 lines, are the literary wood chips left over from an editorial hatchet job.
What was once the age of the Spirit, a long preface to the apocalypse, an
overtly theological scene just prior to the climax of the play, was just too
full of “God” and malignant reflections on pharisaical hypocrisy to be
salvaged. Some witless, axe-wielding
redactor seems to have revised the end of Act 4 by chopping out what he lacked
the capacity to alter, leaving later readers puzzled by two opaque and
discontinuous fragments which amount to little more than stopgap stage
directions. Act 4 Scenes 5 and 6 are
redeemed only by their brevity; and the redactor, totally unredeemed, has no
doubt been writhing in Hell for centuries on account of his sins against
literature.
With this reconstruction, Measure
for Measure emerges as parable composed of parables, a kaleidoscopic
reformulation of themes, stories, people and moral teachings of the Bible,
written with the intent of indicting coercive intolerant Christian sects like
Puritanism. This is no joke for
Shakespeare. The Puritans were
threatening to abolish his art form and his livelihood.
He is returning “measure for measure”.
Measure for Measure vindicates
the theatre of the charge (which had been made by some Christian moralists since
the time of Tertullian and Augustine) that drama is a Dionysian art that incites
sexual transgression and is intrinsically opposed to Christian morality.
Justifying theatre against such severe critics was a very ambitious
project, because to a great extent, Tertullian, Augustine and the Puritans were
right: in both theory and practice, the theatre was closely associated with
sexual immorality. All female roles
were played by men. The spectacle of
men in drag imitating women has unsubtle homosexual resonances and is explicitly
prohibited in the Bible.
Moreover, the rowdy patrons of theatres often took the “liberty” of
patronizing the taverns and whorehouses that were located close by.
As the Duke says (5.1.320), “… I have seen corruption boyle and
bubble / Till it ore-run the Stew….” The
corruption of brothels or “stews” bubbled over into the theatres.
Shakespeare brilliantly locates sexual immorality in the neighborhood of
brothels and theatres in Act 1, Scene 2, by artfully capitalizing on the
multiple meanings of the word “liberty”.
Lucio asks Claudio how he came to be arrested for fornication and put in
shackles. Claudio answers, “From
too much liberty, (my Lucio)…” (1.3.10).
This is at least a quadruple entendre.
“Liberty” means freedom, but it also means license or undue
familiarity (Claudio has taken “liberties” with Julietta).
Ironically, liberty also has a theological meaning—as the OED puts it,
“freedom from the bondage of sin or the law”; but of course in this context
it ironically means quite the opposite. Most
importantly, “liberty” has an archaic meaning that most twenty-first century
readers will not recognize. According
to the OED, “in England before 1850” a liberty was “a district within the
limits of a county, but exempt from the jurisdiction of the sheriff…”.
In 1580, the Lord Mayor of London had complained of the danger to public
morals posed by “the erecting and frequenting of houses very infamous for
incontinent rule out of our liberties and jurisdiction”.
The “houses very infamous” referred to by the Lord Mayor were
playhouses, not whorehouses, but he seems to have acknowledged little
difference. Because a “liberty”
was a geographical area exempt from external legal oversight, it was often a red
light district associated with the disorder and vice fostered by morally
offensive establishments like taverns, brothels and theatres.
This is why in the same scene (1.2.94-5), Pompey describes Angelo’s
proclamation against vice ambiguously as stating, “All howses in the Suburbs
of Vienna must bee / pluck’d downe”. Angelo
is abolishing Vienna’s “liberties”, which breed lewdness, and the theatres
are in danger of being pulled down along with the stews.
Catholicism
had made peace with drama during the Middle Ages by using morality plays and
passion plays for liturgical and educational purposes.
For the more extreme sects of Protestantism, however, the rapprochement
between the Church and the theatre was a moral indictment of both.
This may be the reason that the play is set in Catholic Vienna rather
than Protestant London. Measure for Measure owes much to
the tradition of medieval Catholic morality plays because it uses symbolic
characters and events derived from Biblical sources to hold vice up to ridicule
and vindicate the cardinal Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity.
Like the
medieval mystery plays, the names of the characters in Measure for Measure have symbolic
meanings that reinforce the Biblical symbolism built into the plot.
The name of the Duke, Vincentio, means “conqueror”.
This is apt because the Duke is YHWH, the omnipotent, omniscient God of
the Old Testament who conquers all who oppose him.
He is the wrathful Lord of the merciless servant in Matthew 18:32-45.
Like Prospero in the Tempest, the Duke is always in control without
always seeming to be. Unlike the
other characters in the play, he is not fooled by outward appearances.
Vincentio is the deus
abscondita, a Tester who enacts moral laws, assigns praise and blame, and is
ultimately revealed to be the only righteous judge.
He is the awesome, inscrutable God of the book of Job who is at best only
partially comprehended by human beings. As
in the case of Job, the afflictions he sends to human beings are painful but
educative, not pointlessly cruel. As
it is written Psalm 119:67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now I
have kept thy word.” The
characters in Measure
for Measure, like Job, are chastened but improved, so that they ultimately realize
Psalm 119:71: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might
learn thy statutes.”
In Measure for Measure, YHWH
goes fishing for the Beast in Puritanism, because He can do what human beings
cannot, “… draw out Leviathan with an hook”.
He is a fisher of men, and, being omniscient, the Duke knows the proper
bait. Angelo ruefully muses
(2.3.383-4), “Oh cunning enemy, that to catch a Saint / With Saints dost bait
thy hooke….” Angelo is the
biggest fish landed in Act 5; but, as in the last chapter of the gospel of John,
the Duke ultimately succeeds in catching every sinful human being in the
unbroken net of scripture. Some
scholars have mistakenly described the Duke as a Machiavellian figure: a
ruthless power-monger who manipulates his subjects for his own amoral ends.
Yet if the Duke is a dark political ubermensch,
beyond good and evil, it is hard to understand why he would care about the
sexual transgressions of his subjects in the first act, or why he would forgive
their sins in the third act, or why he would commute their punishments in the
fifth. The interpretation of the
Duke as a Machiavellian is glaringly inadequate.
Friar Ludowick, who is the Duke disguised as an itinerant preacher, is
Jesus.
He is transcendent grace made immanent.
His name means “famous warrior”, and his loving struggle against sin
is ultimately victorious over “the Beast”.
Pulling Leviathan out with a hook fully justifies his fame.
He spends much of his time telling people to repent their sins and
prepare for judgement, using “craft against vice” (3.1.531) to thwart those
who would slander the Duke or debauch religion for base political ends.
He is the prophet of a spiritual revival, affirming the Duke’s moral
law but forgiving sins and combining mercy with judgement.
Before Angelo’s confession in Act 5, the Friar describes himself to
Isabella as Angelo’s “confessor” (3.1.169).
This irony is true, strictly speaking, because sooner or later God is
everyone’s confessor, whether they know it or not and whether they like it or
not. The Friar’s kingdom is not of
this world, which is why he says in 3.2.473-6 that he is “not of this Countrie”
but “…I am a brother / Of gracious order, late come from the Sea / In
speciall business from his Holinesse.” Comforting
the afflicted, revealing true human nature and rescuing sinners from their
depravity is the Friar’s “special business”.
Angelo, Isabella’s antagonist, is a fallen angel.
His original sin is Pride, which goeth before a fall.
As Isabella describes him (2.2.119-20), “… man, proud man / Dresst in
a little briefe authoritie…”. He
seems to be a man of moral perfection and self sufficiency, but he knows he is
proud. He acknowledges his secret
transgressions when he muses, “…my gravity, / Wherein, let no man hear me, I
take pride” (2.4.9-10). Lucio,
emphasizing Angelo’s attempt to stifle his carnal impulses in 1.4.57-61,
describes him as “… a man, whose blood / Is very snow-broth, one, who never
feeles / The wanton stings, and motions of sence: / But doth rebate, and blunt
his natural edge / With profits of the minde; Studie, and fast.”
Surprised by his lust for Isabella, Angelo wonders, “What dost thou, or
what art thou, Angelo?” (2.2.176) because he only imperfectly knows himself.
He initially attempts to deny his sinful nature as an ordinary human
being. Isabella stirs no sympathy in
him when she says, “… goe to your bosome, / Knock there, and aske your heart
what it doth know / That’s like my brother’s fault; If it confesse / A
natural guiltinesse, such as his, / Let not sound a thought upon your tongue /
Against my brother’s life. (2.2.138-143).
Angelo moves in a downward spiral from one deadly sin to another until he
becomes the demonic inverse of a good ruler.
Isabella says of him (3.1.88-92), “This outward sainted Deputie…is
yet a divill, / His filth within being cast….”
This is derived from Matthew 23:27-8: “Ye are like unto whited
sepulchers which appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s
bones and all uncleanness. Even so
ye outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and
iniquity.”
Angelo and Lucio, the two most conspicuously sinful characters in the
play, indicate their spiritual state by regularly mangling scripture both in
letter and spirit. When Escalus asks
Angelo to show mercy on Claudio because he has faced temptation from similar
lustful impulses, Angelo retorts (2.1.17-8), “’Tis one thing to be tempted,
Escalus / Another thing to fall.” His
spiritual pride directly contradicts the words of Jesus.
As it is written in Matthew 5: 27, “Ye have heard that it was said by
them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, that
whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart.” Angelo then
develops his merciless pharisaical legalism in contrast to Escalus’ emphasis
on the ubiquity of sin and the justice in compassion (2.1. 27-30).
He says, “You may not so extenuate his offense / For I may have such
faults; but rather tell me, / When I that censure him, do so offend, / Let mine
owne judgement pattern out my death.” In
the end, Angelo gets what he asked for, as it is written in Luke 19:22, “Out
of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant.”
Angelo appears to be a virtuous man, but in reality he contains within
his soul the germ of every evil. When
he has his assignation with Marianna in darkness and silence, he is symbolically
rejecting the Light and the Word. The
Duke obliquely tells Angelo that he is making an example of him to shed
“light” on the human condition. As
he says in deputizing Angelo just before leaving, “Heaven [God?] doth with us,
as we, with Torches doe, / Not light them for themselves…” (1.1.33-4).
This is a reference to Luke 8:16, and 11:33 as well as to Matthew 5:15:
“Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a
candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”
The thematic conflict between light and darkness which pervades Measure
for Measure runs parallel the related conflicts between truth and falsehood,
being and seeming, reality and reputation, soul and body, spirit and flesh, love
and lust, grace and law.
As Angelo says just before he is exposed to judgement,
“Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, / nothing goes right”
(4.4.31-2). He believes himself to
be more than human and ends up being less, bestial and sinful, corrupt and
corrupting. When the opportunity
arose, Angelo presumed to take the place of God, ruthlessly dispensing law
without justice. Angelo’s fate is
patterned out in Romans 2:1-3:
“Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for
wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest
doest the same things. But we are
sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit
such things. And thinkest thou this,
O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou
shalt escape the judgment of God?” Angelo
symbolizes the State attempting to profane Religion.
His flawed self-knowledge runs its course until he encounters a righteous
Judge in Act 5, when he confronts his true nature and asks of the Duke the wages
of sin.
Angelo begins as a concealed Pharisee and ends exposed and shamed as a
hypocrite. He embodies the Letter of
the Law, which giveth death.
The character of Angelo is developed with a special reference to coins
and the stamping of images on metal: an “Angel” was a ten shilling coin.
This cleverly elaborates the parable found in all three Synoptics about
spiritual and political duties.
In Mark 12:16-7, Jesus holds up a coin and asks, “… Whose is this
image and superscription? And they
said unto him, Caesar’s. And Jesus
answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and
to God the things that are God’s.” Like
all human beings, Angelo is made in God’s image.
However, the base metal of human nature is inadequate to bear such
engraving. In 1.1.17, the Duke asks
Escalus regarding Angelo, “What figure of us think you, he will beare?”
If Escalus had read Romans 1:23-4, he would know the answer.
Sinful human beings “… changed the glory of the uncorruptible God
into an image made like to corruptible man….
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their
own hearts….” The metal and coin
symbolism keeps returning to Angelo like an unlucky penny.
Before accepting the Duke’s commission, Angelo says in 1.1.49-51,
“Let there be some more test, made of my mettle / Before so noble, and so
great a figure/ be stamp’t upon it.” It
is important to remember that in Shakespeare’s time, the spelling of English
had not yet been standardized. In
this line, the word “mettle” means “personal qualities, abilities and
character”, as it does for us; but for Shakespeare, it also meant “metal”,
the substance from which coins are “stamped”.
This brilliant use of multiple meanings to reinforce the symbolism of
sustained Biblical references is an extraordinary poetic juggling act that
extends throughout the play. Desperate
for help, in 1.2.179, Claudio asks Lucio to persuade his sister Isabella to ask
clemency from Angelo, saying, “… bid her selfe assay him.”
The extravagant variety of relevant meanings for “assay” is most
impressive. It is at least a
quadruple entendre. According to the
OED, “assay” means, among other things, “to try with temptations”, “to
assail with words, arguments or love-proposals”, “to test the mettle of
(anyone) in a fight”, and of course, “to evaluate the quality of metals”.
All of these apply to her speech toward Angelo.
Angelo recognizes his fault in 2.4.42-50, but cannot control his lust
because of his Pauline “bondage of the will”.
He states that “it were as good / To pardon him that hath from nature
stolne /A man already made, as to remit, / Their sawcie sweetnes that do coyne
heavens Image / In stamps that are forbid: ‘tis all as easie / Falsely to take
away a life true made, As to put mettle in restrained meanes /To make a false
one.” Angelo describes fornication
as the counterfeit coining of God’s image in the womb, and the generation of
illegitimate children is as blameworthy as murder, a sin which he will also
attempt to commit against Claudio. As
the Duke says of Angelo (3.1.256), “the corrupt Deputy [will be] scaled.”
Like another Biblical ruler, Angelo is assayed and comes up short.
When “scaled”, he is “weighed in balance and found wanting”.
Isabella, the pure and resolute novice nun who asks mercy for her
brother, refuses to succumb to seduction, yet intercedes for Angelo and spares
him, is the Christian church. Her
argument with Angelo is a personified conflict between grace and law.
She is one of Shakespeare’s most successful female characters,
considerably more interesting than Ophelia and as intransigent as Lady Macbeth
but without the moral taint. Isabella
represents the Spirit of the Law which giveth life.
Her moral flaw is a minor lapse into unforgiving anger in (4.3.117) when
the Duke tells her that Angelo has betrayed his promise and had Claudio
executed. Enraged, she says, “O, I
wil to him and plucke out his eies!” which is a tortured misuse of Matthew
18:9: “If thine eye cause thee to offend, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee.” Although Isabella
ultimately relents, she is not an apologist for transgression, but rather
recognizes that all are sinners and all need Christian charity; thus she is
willing to extend to Angelo the mercy she believes that he denied her brother.
She is tested but ultimately forgives those who trespass against her.
Isabella can also be seen as Lady Wisdom from the book of Proverbs,
described as the consort of God.
Like the Church as it is described in the book of Revelation, she is the
Bride of Christ, which is why she marries the Duke at the end of the play/world.
She is symbolically accurate when she says to Lucio in 1.5.38, “… you
doe blaspheme the good in mocking me.” The
name Isabella ultimately has Hebrew origins.
It means “consecrated to God”. This
is not accidental.
The inability of many contemporary critics to comprehend Isabella’s
motivations reveals literary studies at its most provincial.
Some critics have been so unable to sympathize with Isabella’s motives
that they have represented her as being cold, priggish, heartless, hypocritical.
This is a simple and serious failure of historical knowledge and literary
imagination. Isabella’s strict
devotion to her chastity is essential to the plot, symbolism and character
development in Measure for Measure.
It is Isabella’s inflexible morality that makes her a proper foil to
Angelo, allowing both characters to be developed and psychic depths to be
explored. As she defies him, Angelo
reveals progressively more depravity. Isabella’s
resolute purity inflames Angelo, and profound perversity boils up from deep in
his psyche. He wishes simultaneously
to destroy and possess Isabella’s purity.
Isabella insists (2.4.100-104) that she is willing to accept martyrdom
rather than yield. She adamantly
says, “were I under the tearmes of death, / Th’impression of keene whips
I’ld wear as Rubies, / And strip my selfe to death as to a bed / That longing
have bin sicke for, ere I’ld yield / My body up to shame.”
Isabella’s chastity puts intolerable emotional pressure on Angelo, and
his suppressed psychic tendencies become manifest.
We watch him spiritually implode while pushed to authority beyond his
capacity. Angelo recognizes in his
own counterfeit piety the mirror image of Isabella’s genuine devotion.
Moreover, Angelo secretly likes cruelty and finds pain arousing.
Isabella’s bloody retort brings to the surface Angelo’s suppressed
sexual perversity. While the Duke
was present, his austerity had a sublimated strain of masochism.
With the Duke gone, his sadistic impulses are unconstrained.
He says to Isabella (2.4.161-2), “… now I give my sensuall race, the
reine, / Fit thy consent to my sharpe appetite…”.
His appetite is a weapon, sharp and destructive.
When Isabella refuses, Angelo begins with redoubled intensity to coax and
wheedle, and finally in fury and frustration threatens to torture her brother to
death (2.4.166-8). Among other
things, Shakespeare is acutely suggesting that puritanical hysteria about other
people’s sex lives is an overcompensation for the Puritans’ own barely
suppressed kinkiness. Angelo’s
perverse liking for pain, his own and others’, is the psychic inverse of
Christian agape.
Symbolically, Puritanism is represented as an attempt by depraved
politicians to debauch Christianity.
Beyond issues of characterization, Isabella’s devotion to her chastity
is essential to the plain facts of the story and the allegorical Biblical
symbolism as well. The surprisingly
common critical dismissal of her motives amounts to the inability to seriously
believe that there were (and are) people who accept moral restraints on sexual
behavior and genuinely believe in a future state of rewards and punishments.
If these two assumptions are accepted, Isabella’s refusal of Angelo’s
proposition, even at the cost of her brother’s life, makes perfectly good
sense. As Paul says in Romans 3:18
of those “that do evil that good may come,” their “damnation is just”.
Isabella would be damned for her sin and Claudio, because he abetted her
transgression, would be damned as well (not to mention Angelo).
As Isabella says, “Better it were a brother dide at once, / Than that a
sister, by redeeming him / Should die forever (2.4.106-9). Physical
death is inevitable for Claudio and Isabella, but the much greater evil of
damnation is not. Shakespeare
lucidly anticipated criticism from the lame spiritual equals of Claudio.
He changed the plot of Measure for
Measure from its sources, not only so that the heroine is a nun who refuses
to yield to seduction but also by organizing the plot so that supernatural
morality and earthly prudence are both on her side.
Apart from divine judgement, Isabella is faced with a straightforward
prudential calculation. The promised
swap of secret sex for clemency toward Claudio is a contract that is
unenforceable. Why should Isabella
believe the promise of Angelo, given his evident depravity?
Why would a hypocritical lecher who enjoys pain and cruelty not be a
fraud and a murderer as well? Sin
hunts in packs. If Angelo changes
his mind and refuses clemency to Claudio, no one can stop him from executing one
or both of them to protect himself and cover his crime.
When this happens, Isabella and Claudio are damned as well as doomed.
The execution of Claudio is in fact a necessary exercise of Machiavellian
prudence, as Angelo acknowledges (4.5.26-30).
After his false assignation with Marianna in the place of Isabella,
Angelo instantly double-crosses Isabella and orders Claudio killed, anyway.
Angelo, not the Duke, is the Machiavellian figure in the play.
It is only by maintaining strict chastity that Isabella can save Claudio,
save herself and, most ironically, save Angelo, since it is she who intercedes
for him in Act 5. Isabella’s
resolution and the circumstances of the plot resonate with Psalm 119:92:
“Unless thy law had been my delight, I should then have perished in mine
affliction.”
In addition, those critics who have objected to Isabella’s efforts to
reconcile Marianna to the bed switch with Angelo have failed to appreciate the
Biblical sources of the bed switch in Genesis.
Those critics who have taken Isabella to task for her false claim that
Angelo debauched her in Act 5 are equally mistaken.
The Bible justifies deception for godly purposes and the examples of
divinely sanctioned deception in the Bible are too numerous to list.
The moral righteousness of godly deception was also codified in Canon law
in the maxim: “fragenti fidem, fides frangatur eidem,” which means “with
him who has broken faith, faith may be broken.”
Angelo has broken faith with both God and man.
Isabella’s deceptions are fully justified, and she is allied with the
Friar because she is the most righteous of the human characters in the play.
Lucio is Lucifer, the bringer of light.
He is the Friar’s adversary, a blasphemer, tempter, seducer, and
perjurer. It is he who arranges the
meeting between Isabella and Angelo, encouraging her with artful stage whispers
about the best means to upset his moral equilibrium with her unknowing
temptation. Ironically, Lucio is the
unintentional bringer of light, because it is he who unmasks the Duke/Friar in
the final scene. Like so many
devils, he is simultaneously attractive and repulsive, and he is somewhat too
clever for his own good. He is
selfish, loveless and habitually leads others into sin, but he also has a
roguish wit and sharp tongue which more often than not betrays him.
He is the also funniest character in the play because he speaks without
understanding the import of his revelations.
Like Milton’s Satan, Lucio has the best lines in the work, but in Measure
for Measure he is comic rather than tragic because of the limitations of his
understanding. While addressing one
of his comrades in sin, Lucio addresses all of Measure
for Measure’s auditors and readers. He
uncomprehendingly states the main theme of the play: “Grace, is Grace,
despight of all controversie; / as, for example, Thou thy selfe / art a wicked
villaine, despight of all Grace” (1.2.24-6).
His poetic description of the inscrutable Duke as “the olde fantastical
Duke of darke corners” (4.3.153-4) is much more accurate than he imagines.
Throughout the play, the Duke is present, despite the fact that people
believe him absent; and when people imagine that they are having private
conversations, the Duke always overhears. As
the Friar says to Lucio when he slanders/blasphemes the Duke to his face
(3.1.413-4), “You know not what you speake.”
Like Angelo, Lucio makes revealing inversions of scripture, particularly
while slandering the Duke in his conversations with the Friar.
Like his other slanders about the vice and folly of the Duke, he is
utterly mistaken when he says (3.1.434-5), “The Duke yet would / have darke
deeds darklie answered; hee would never / bring them to light.”
Scripture indicates otherwise. It
is written in John 3:19 that “men loved darkness rather than light… because
their deeds were evil.” The Duke
is the light of the world, and if Lucio knew the Duke or the Bible better, he
would know not to make such hasty judgements.
It is written in 1 Corinthians 4:5, “Therefore
judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light
the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the
hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.”
Lucio’s mistake ironically foreshadows the final judgement in Act 5,
derived from Luke 12:1-12: “… Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees,
which is hypocrisy. For there
is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be
known. Therefore whatsoever ye
have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have
spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
Marianna’s name means “bitter grace”.
She is meant to further the symbolism and allegorical plot rather than to
be a fully rendered character, which is why she behaves in so improbable a
fashion. Her furtive midnight
assignation in the garden with Angelo is a dark parody of the garden of divine
love in the Song of Solomon 6:2. The
story of her bed switch is lifted from the story of Tamar in Genesis.
On account of a fraudulently abrogated marriage contract, Tamar disguises
herself as a whore and is impregnated by Judah.
When his iniquity comes to light, Judah says correctly, “She has been
more righteous than I.”
The crucial point is that Tamar and Judah were destined by Providence to
be ancestors of King David. David,
like Angelo, is God’s chosen magistrate, and he also has a weakness for women
which causes him to misuse his authority in killing Uriah, provoking God’s
retribution.
Even more striking is the fact that David’s line leads to Jesus.
The story of Tamar suggests that sexual transgression is contained within
God’s providential plan for redemption, and is in fact found the lineage of
Jesus himself: it was not the Puritan’s favorite Bible story.
Shakespeare centers the play around Tamar’s divinely approved bed trick
and throws it right in their face.
Much the same is true of Escalus, the wise, aged deputy appointed by the
Duke to assist Angelo. His name is a
play on Aeschylus, the great Greek tragedian known for his concern with problems
of moral and political order. When
he encounters the Friar (3.1.488-509), Escalus’ description of the Duke is
entirely the opposite of Lucio’s, and the old man is presented as humble,
reverent and judicious. Escalus
spends much of the play reminding Angelo that human frailty is ubiquitous, that
mistakes in the administration of justice are inevitable, and that overweening
pride is particularly improper to a magistrate.
Old Escalus is wise enough to extend mercy where it is possible, but he
cannot teach this to Angelo because the latter’s proud self-sufficiency
disdains instruction. Puritans
believed that they had little to learn from ancient pagan wisdom, and
Shakespeare will not grant Angelo forgiveness until he learns the value of
Escalus’ insight. In Act 5, when
he finally recognizes that the limitations intrinsic to human nature apply to
him, Angelo, chastened, apologizes to Escalus (5.1.477-80).
This comic resolution, Angelo contrite and Escalus raised to a higher
status by the Duke, allows Shakespeare to vindicate tragedy to disapproving
Puritans. Escalus is rendered
inoffensive to Christianity when it is shown that the insights of tragedy,
properly subordinated to Christian doctrine, are not necessarily in conflict
with Christian morals and evil does not necessarily lead to death without
redemption.
The minor characters of Measure for
Measure also have symbolic significance.
Claudio and Julietta, the couple whose original transgression of the
Duke’s laws sets the play in motion, are analogous to Adam and Eve.
When Julietta repents her sins to the Friar in 2.3 and the Friar blesses
her, she is the woman taken in adultery, accused under the old law but forgiven
by Jesus.
Claudio, whose name means “lame”, lacks the spiritual strength of
Isabella. Not only is he given to
fornication, he is so scared of his own death that he is willing to pimp his
sister to save his life. Claudio,
lamed by lust, is also paralyzed by fear. He
is forced by the Friar to recognize that all human life carries with it a death
sentence, and like the paralyzed man in the miracle, Claudio the lame is cured
by the word of God. Jesus says in
Mark 2:9, “Take up thy bed and walk,” and later in the play, the Friar says,
“Patterne in himselfe to know, / Grace to stand, and Vertue, go”
(3.1.517-8). Claudio loses faith and
backslides after the Friar offers spiritual help, and in trying to save his life
he suffers spiritual death. As it is
written in Matthew 6:25, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and
whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall gain it.”
Through the Friar’s head switch, in the course of the play Claudio
appears to die physically, but he is revived when the Friar contrives to have
him restored to life in four days (4.2. 159-60) as Jesus did with Lazarus.
The nameless but kindly Provost, who is rewarded because he is sworn to
the Duke rather than the deputy (4.2.180), bears comparison with the faithful
centurion of Matthew 8:9. The reward
to the Provost (5.1.530-1) can be found in Matthew 25:21.
The unrepentant murderer Barnardine, who is spared by the goodness of the
Friar rather than for any merit of his own, also has a Biblical antecedent.
He should be compared with Barabbas.
Before the concluding scene, the Friar disappears from view, and he
leaves Isabella (the church) in the hands of Friar Peter, who bears a striking
resemblance to Saint Peter as he guides the church toward the final Judgement
(4.2.211). Friar Thomas, who has so
many questions for the Duke in Act 1, is a doubting Thomas.
Except for the Duke/Friar, no character is completely evil or completely
good in Measure for Measure.
Even Mistress Overdone and Pompey, the bawds who were treated leniently
by Escalus, turned out to have redeeming qualities.
They have been providing for the bastard child of Lucio and Kate Keepdown,
after Lucio had denied paternity (3.2.202).
Although flawed human law has let Lucio escape punishment, the Duke is
omniscient and he knows what human beings cannot, so his justice and judgement
are perfect. In (3.1.385-6), Lucio,
in the process of blaspheming the Duke, tells the Friar, “Oh Sir, you are
deceiv’d.” The Friar replies
with deadpan ironic simplicity, “’Tis not possible.”
The Duke knows in advance that Angelo will receive from him “letters of
strange tenor” (4.2.197); and of course the New Testament contains many
divinely inspired letters which are hard to reconcile, such as the Epistle of
James and the Epistle of Paul to the Romans.
Having received the letters in 4.4, Angelo and Escalus are perplexed by
the Duke’s writings: as Angelo says, “Every letter he hath writ hath
disvouch’d the other” (4.4.1). The
obscurity and contradiction within the writings sent by the Duke make the Bible
very difficult to interpret. All
that Angelo and Escalus can piece together is that the Duke will soon return and
dispense justice to those wronged in his absence, which naturally makes Angelo
very anxious. The Eschaton
approaches, the Apocalypse is coming, and the Duke was thoughtful enough to say
so to Escalus. In an earlier scene,
Escalus had asked the Friar, “What newes abroad i’ th’ World?”
The Friar responds, “None, but there is so great a Feavor on goodnesse
that the dissolution of it must cure it” (3.1.477-9).
The “it” refers to the dissolution of the world, not the fever.
Sin is here to stay.
Throughout Measure for Measure,
the sinful human condition is referred to as a sickness, a “fever” for which
there is no earthly cure. The only
mortality in Measure for Measure comes
from this fever. Because of an
accident provided by “heaven” (read God: 4.3.74), the notorious pirate
Ragozine dies of this “fever” (4.3.67-8) and he provides the head-for-head
switch in Act 5. Ragozine may have
been Lucio’s pirate who “razed” one of the Ten Commandments (1.2.7-15).
This mortal fever has only one cure.
The words “remedy”, “cure” and “medicine” are used more than
a dozen times in the text of Measure for
Measure as we have it, and Barnardine’s liquor is the wrong tonic.
The proper prescription that will “heal” or “mend” the human
condition is fidelity to the mercy, charity and humility enjoined by God. |
