*What follows is a mixture of what I said in class (or will say in class) and additional material that I either left out for lack of time or thought of later. For complete citations and endnotes, visit the full commentary for this play.
Measure for Measure. (Norton: Comedies, 3rd ed. 901-59.)
Act 1, Scene 1 (pp. 901-03, Duke Vincentio of Vienna says he must travel and appoints upright young Angelo to govern in his stead, with old Escalus as his second-in-command. A stunned Angelo accepts; he and Escalus withdraw to determine their powers.)
Duke’s plan will have the character of an experiment.
When the Duke says to Angelo, “Spirits are not finely touched / But to fine issues” (902, 1.1.35), he is saying virtue is an active power that reveals itself in welldoing. He may see this power in Angelo, but Angelo seems uncertain.
Angelo will have the power “So to enforce or qualify the laws / As to your soul seems good” (903, 1.1.65-66). Vincentio professes shyness in public displays: “I love the people, / But do not like to stage me to their eyes” (903, 1.1.67-68).
We find similar reticence in Henry IV, who criticized his predecessor for rash displays.
The problem is, the Duke of Vienna is not good at maintaining his authority. He has not been firm in upholding the law in Vienna. See Prospero, Richard II, etc.
Angelo will serve as a harsh corrective, with the goal of balancing justice with mercy.
Angelo and Escalus cordially withdraw to figure out the exact scope of their powers.
Act 1, Scene 2 (pp. 903-07, Lucio and two gentlemen exchange witticisms about syphilis. Mistress Overdone announces that Claudio is being led off to prison for impregnating Julietta, and airs her fears that the city’s severe new moral dispensation will put her on the streets. Pompey cheers her up. Claudio gets perp-walked in, and shares his views on Angelo’s harshness with Lucio. Claudio invests his hopes for release in his sister Isabella’s beauty and rhetorical skill.)
BBC sets this scene in a tavern. We have gone from seeing Angelo and Escalus remove themselves to discuss the limits of their power to a scene in which precision becomes a matter for jesting. Lucio needles the Gentlemen about their lack of moral standing, and implies that one of them has syphilis.
These are the type of people the Duke is worried he’s given too much license.
Soon Mistress Overdone interrupts the jesting to tell Lucio and his friennds that Claudio has been arrested “for getting Madam Julietta / with child” (905, 1.2.66-67). Lucio is distressed, but Mistress O complains about her business.
Pompey the Clown endeavors to cheer Mistress O up.
Shakespeare gives us a portrait of Vienna’s red light district, which constitutes a separate economy of its own, and which has deeply human problems to deal with. Mistress O is worried about what will become of her in the new Puritan dispensation.
Talk about venereal disease becomes ominous: there were no good treatments for syphilis, which ravaged the underground economy of Mistress O. Later, see William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (1735).
Claudio isn’t bitter towards his jailers; he is philosophical, saying with St. Paul in Romans 9:15 that heaven will call down judgment “on whom it will” (906, 1.2.111).
Claudio’s view does not differ much the Duke’s. The moral laxity of men like Claudio is the cause of their shame: “Our natures do pursue, / Like rats that raven down their proper bane, / A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die” (906, 1.2.117-119).
This understanding agrees with Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 129.” Hopkins, too, would write, “I see / The lost are like this, and their scourge to be / As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.”
Claudio wonders about the cause of the harshness that Angelo has shown, Maybe he’s trying to set a new example for an unruly public. Then he suggests that Angelo has had him arrested “for a name” (907, 1.2.157). Claudio now sounds bitter, not philosophical. We begin to see vacillation of temperament.
Claudio trusts in Isabella: “in her youth / There is a prone and speechless dialect, / Such as move men. Beside, she hath prosperous art / When she will play with reason and discourse, / And well she can persuade” (907, 1.2.170-174). Perhaps these gifts of beauty and rhetorical skill will win the day.
Act 1, Scene 3 (pp. 907-08, Duke Vincentio explains to a friar his purposes for wanting to disguise himself as a friar and return to observe Vienna: he wants Angelo to impose strict justice to reset the city’s moral conduct, and he wants to see how power affects this puritanical young man.)
The Duke admits he has appointed Angelo to govern because he has not maintained order—he has “let slip” (908, 1.3.20) the “strict statutes …” (908, 1.3.19)
The asks why the Duke does not simply reassert the laws himself. To this, the Duke replies that the correction would seem “too dreadful” (908, 1.3.34). [Machiavelli.]
The Duke, therefore, delegates his severer functions of judgment and punishment to Angelo and Escalus. The balance between being loved and hated is to be respected.
But Vincentio’s description of Angelo leads us to another purpose: “Lord Angelo is precise, / Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses / That his blood flows or that his appetite / Is more to bread than stone” (908,1.3.50-53). What will Angelo do? “Hence shall we see / If power change purpose, what our seemers be” (908, 1.3.53-54).
Much about this scene is disturbing with regard to the Duke’s reasoning and even his character. He bears himself morally, but his Machiavellian logic leads to a certain complexity or ambiguity in dealing with a problem that he himself has caused.
A common interpretation casts the Duke as a godlike figure hiding but still dispensing ultimate justice. But is he instead treating his subjects (“normals”) like hapless animals in some cruel experiment?
Act 1, Scene 4 (pp. 908-10, Lucio visits Isabella’s convent of St. Clare, and enlists her aid in winning through her charm the release of her wayward brother Claudio. Isabella is at first doubtful, but agrees.)
First impressions: Isabella enters speaking with an older nun, and admits she wishes her prospective holy order would impose even stricter rules. Does this desire reveal something about Isabella’s psychosexual makeup? More on this anon….
Lucio relates Claudio’s situation to Isabella, and she can hardly believe it. She doesn’t trust Lucio, but he seems sincere. Lucio reassures Isabella: “I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted / By your renouncement, an immortal spirit…” (909, 1.4.35-36).
At base, says Lucio, Angelo is centering his efforts on the sexual mores of Vienna, and he wants to make an example of Claudio. The prospect of being hanged supposedly focuses the mind, as Dr. Johnson said, and Angelo means to impose this focus on Vienna.
Isabella doubts her power to help Claudio, but Lucio says: “Our doubts are traitors / And makes us lose the good we oft might win, / By fearing to attempt” (910, 1.4.78-80).
Lucio brings in the concept of fear, not doubt. He asks Isabella to realize that she has powers to move men that may frighten her: beauty, sexuality. He wants her to use these. The rest of his speech is plain: “Go to Lord Angelo…” (910, 1.4.80ff).
Lucio suggests that even Angelo is a young man and that his probity will prove no match for Isabella’s charm. Isabella responds well: “I’ll see what I can do” (910, 1.4.84).
Lucio is a foppish, slippery character, but he is eloquent and thoughtful. The relative paucity of such eloquence in the Duke’s speech suggests this character can’t control things to a sufficient extent. Perhaps Measure for Measure is a “city comedy” wherein power shifts from royal, magisterial figures like the Duke to the citizens themselves.
That approach may undermine the play’s overt treatment of reasserting control as a royal function. Still, it’s worth attending to the distribution of eloquence within the plays: who speaks finely, who speaks plainly, and who seems most self-conscious about his or her way of speaking and observing (or breaking) the polite rules of decorum.
Act 2, Scene 1 (pp. 910-16, Escalus counsels moderation, but Angelo insists on condemning Claudio to death. The Provost enters with Pompey and Master Froth, offering a convoluted story alleging that his wife has been abused by them in Mistress Overdone’s establishment. Escalus is bemused, but dismisses Froth and indulgently lets Pompey go after scolding him. Escalus tells the Provost to bring some replacements for his office to court.)
Angelo and Escalus hash out their thoughts on Claudio. Escalus tries to soften Angelo, who still sees no reason to attenuate his severity.
Angelo says, “When I, that censure him, do so offend, / Let mine own judgment pattern out my death, / and nothing come in partial” (911, 2.1.30-31). This is not far from Shylock’s “My deeds upon my head!” (4.1.204)
With the entrance of Elbow, Froth, and Pompey, Escalus gets his chance. After Angelo leaves, Escalus lets Pompey go after scolding him, repeating Vienna’s problem with laxity leading to and decadence. Still, Escalus’s decision seems in line with Portia’s biblical wisdom: “The quality of mercy is not strained” (Merchant 4.1.182).
Act 2, Scene 2 (pp. 916-20, Isabella faces much resistance from Angelo in her suit to save her brother, but at last, with Lucio and the Provost looking on, her words and charm overcome Angelo’s denials, leaving him in agony.)
The Provost enters and, like Escalus, tries to soften up Angelo, to no avail.
Isabella’s first gambit is to suggest, “let it be his fault, / And not my brother” (917, 2.2.36-37). This fails, and Isabella gives up, only to be chided by Lucio (917, 2.2.46).
“Hate the sin, love the sinner” went over poorly, so Isabella moves on to the modern driver’s complaint to a traffic cop: “But everyone else speeds too!” Isabella says, “I do think that you might pardon him, / And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy” (917, 2.2.50-51). This line, too, fails.
In Isabella’s next attempt, there is a mix of straightforward pleading and anger, even reproach: “If he had been as you, and you as he, / You would have slipped like him, but he like you / Would not have been so stern” (917, 2.2.65-67).
Isabella next makes a religious appeal: “Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once, / And He that might the vantage best have took / Found out the remedy” (918, 2.2.74-76). To this imitatio Christi appeal, Angelo invokes abstract LAW.
Isabella’s next move is that the offense isn’t so terrible: “Who is it that hath died for this offense? / There’s many have committed it“ (918, 2.2.88-89). Angelo’s response invokes classic deterrence.
Isabella moves on to a deep reproach: “Oh, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant” (918, 2.2.108-10). Isabella’s following words sound angry; she condemns the arrogance of “man, proud man, / Dressed in a little brief authority, / Most ignorant of what he’s most assured…” (919, 2.2.118-20).
Lucio is beside himself with joy. There is fire and righteous anger in Isabella’s words. Angelo is moved. She tells him to look within himself, and examine his conscience: might he himself be guilty of the desire that led Claudio to sin?
This seems canny on Isabella’s part because it is, we can tell from Angelo’s words, precisely such desire that her words and manner have awakened in him: in an aside, he admits that his “sense breeds” (919, 2.2.143) with hearing her virtuous advice.
Angelo is shaken: “What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? / Dost thou desire her foully for those things / That make her good?” (920, 2.2.175-177). He now finds that his dry, abstract notions of the good are no match for Eros.
Act 2, Scene 3 (pp. 920-21, The Duke, disguised as a friar, enters the prison in Vienna and counsels Juliet on how to bear up under the weight of her transgression with Claudio. He also informs her that Claudio is scheduled to be executed tomorrow.)
The Duke, disguised as a friar, visits the prison-house in Vienna and counsels Juliet, informing her as well that her lover, Claudio, is set to be executed tomorrow.
Act 2, Scene 4 (pp. 921-25, Angelo makes his indecent proposal. If Isabella will have sex with him, he will spare her brother. At first, Isabella does not understand, but then she is outraged at his repeated offer, and even threatens to expose him. Alone at last, Isabella determines to visit Claudio in prison, sure that he will approve of her decision to preserve her chastity.)
Angelo continues to seethe with passion for Isabella, and he tenders her a brutally indecent proposal, repeating it four times without gaining her submission.
Isabella values her chastity more than she values her brother’s life. She is just as much of a moral absolutist as Angelo had earlier professed to be. Isabella, however, shows herself more flexible since she argues in a manner that softens Claudio’s offense. Severity, she puts it to Angelo, has terrible real-world effects.
Angelo says that even if Isabella exposes him, no one will believe an ordinary woman. As King Lear points out, “Robes and furred gowns hides all” (4.6.158).
Isabella is certain that her brother Claudio will support her moral purity, even at the cost of his life. She’s in for quite a surprise.
A point-counterpoint structure pits Angelo’s declaration “now I give my sensual race the rein” (925, 2.4.157) against Isabella’s passionate rejection: “the impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies, / And strip myself to death as to a bed / And strip myself to death as to a bed / That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield / My body up to shame.”
Act 3, Scene 1 (pp. 925-36, the Duke visits Claudio in prison, counseling him to accept his sentence. Isabella enters and unsettles Claudio by telling him of Angelo’s dastardly attempt on her virtue. The Duke (as Friar Lodowick) takes Isabella aside, explaining how she can help rescue Claudio, do Angelo’s one-time fiancée Mariana a good turn, and expose Angelo’s misconduct. [continued ….]
Constable Elbow brings Pompey by on his way to prison, and Lucio refuses to pay the man’s bail; Lucio slanders the Duke, not realizing his interlocutor is the man himself. Finally, Escalus marches Mistress Overdone off to jail, and briefly converses with the disguised Duke, who is then left alone to reflect on his plan to reestablish justice and equity in Vienna.)
The Duke (as Friar Lodowick) offers Claudio advice like Marcus Aurelius or Boethius, remarking upon the nothingness of earthly vanity. But he reduces life to abstraction: “For thou exists on many a thousand grains / That issue out of dust” (926, 3.1.20-21).
Claudio’s resolve crumbles when Isabella enters. When Claudio hears that the stumbling block is Isabella’s virginity, he begins to side with Angelo: “Sure it is no sin, / Or of the deadly seven it is the least” (928, 3.1.109-10). At last he is reduced to pleading, “Death is a fearful thing” (928, 3.1.116).
This is too much for Isabella, who calls him a coward. She asks, “Is’t not a kind of incest to take life / From thine own sister’s shame?” (928, 3.1.139-40). So Claudio becomes Angelo’s confederate against Isabella: they’re practically the same man.
The disguised Duke reenters and again moves Claudio to accept his fate. He claims, falsely, that Angelo is merely testing Isabella. But when he speaks with Isabella, he admits that Angelo has in fact made her an immoral proposal.
But the Duke has a clever plan: he tells Isabella that “you may most uprighteously do a poor / wronged lady a merited benefit; redeem your brother from / the angry law; do no stain to your own gracious person; and / much please the absent Duke…” (930, 3.1.195-198).
This plot will involve Mariana, the sister of a soldier named Frederick. She was supposed to marry Angelo, but he was put off by the loss of her dowry when Frederick perished in a shipwreck. All the same, Mariana still loves him.
So Isabella can save the day: she just needs to pretend she is willing to sleep with Angelo. Then, at the designated place, Mariana will substitute herself for Isabella. This is the ancient “bed trick.”
Constable Elbow soon drags Pompey across the stage to bring him to prison. The disguised Duke chastises Pompey, and recommends severe punishment to cure him. The Duke seems to have benefited from his absence: he speaks bluntly to Pompey.
Lucio refuses to help Pompey, turning down the man’s request for bail. Lucio’s reason isn’t connected to virtue—it’s merely “the wear” (932, 3.1.323), meaning “fashion.”
After Elbow and Pompey leave (931-33, 3.1.258-334), the Duke is alone with the gossipy, insolent Lucio. This foppish, if articulate and witty, character proceeds to trash the Duke’s strict substitute and to slander the Duke to his (disguised) face.
Lucio represents a portion of the general public in a rotten state. While Lucio’s claims about the Duke’s dissolute ways are false, as suppositions they are not groundless.
If immorality and criminality are rampant, the best place to look for the source is the people’s governors. Still, Lucio offers a cogent view of the prospects of austere do-gooders and reformers when he says of lechery, “it is impossible to extirp it quite, Friar, till / eating and drinking be put down” (933, 3.1.348-49).
All that remains from 934-36, 3.1.419-509 is for Escalus to order Mistress Overdone off to prison and leave room for Escalus and the disguised Duke to talk. Before she’s swept away, she reveals damning information against Lucio: he got the prostitute Kate Keepdown pregnant and then failed to do right by her and the child.
Escalus, alone with the Provost and the disguised Duke, informs him that Angelo is constant in his decision to have Claudio executed tomorrow.
The Duke apprises the state of the world’s affairs bleakly, saying that inconstancy and mistrust reign everywhere. The riddle that explains it all, he says, is “There is / scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure, but / security enough to make fellowships accursed” (935, 3.1.457-59).
Perhaps the Duke shares something of Sir Francis Bacon’s pessimism in “Of Truth” (1625), which concludes (see Luke 18:8), “When Christ cometh, ‘[H]e shall not find faith upon the earth.’” Faithless people load themselves down with financial and legal bonds, which are symptomatic of universal corruption, not curative of society’s ills.
The Duke is left to his own reflections. He sums up Angelo’s example in rhyming tetrameter: “He who the sword of heaven will bear / Should be as holy as severe” (936, 3.1.488-89). If the Duke ever believed mortals had any business acting with the severity of Angelo, the unfolding of the experiment is giving him a corrective.
“Surprised by sin” is a phrase made famous by critic Stanley Fish in his sharp analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and we might do well to apply it here. Just as the Puritanical Angelo is surprised by his own lust, so is the Duke surprised, and more than a little displeased, that his experiment with Angelo has gone so far sideways.
It is not for fallen humans to play Christ the Judge, and the Duke determines that he must use deceit to establish the partial degree of virtue and fairness possible in a saucy world: “Craft against vice I must apply” (936, 3.1.504). This entails corralling Angelo into a marriage with Mariana, but the final two acts will reveal the rest.
Act 4, Scene 1 (pp. 936-38, Following a vignette of the jilted Mariana at her home, the Duke in disguise shows up and so does Isabella; these two confer on their plan to trap Angelo, and the Duke introduces the two women. The Duke worries about what his subjects are saying about him in his absence.)
This may be the scene that inspired Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood painter John Everett Millais and Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson to create their respective works of art titled “Mariana.” It is easy for us to suggest that Mariana’s match with Angelo is not exactly made in heaven—the hypocritical Puritan abandoned her when her dowry fell through thanks to her brother’s shipwreck.
When we are introduced to Mariana in person, the first thing we hear is a boy singing a tale of frustrated romance that perfectly suits Mariana’s predicament. There is a strong sense of sexual frustration about Shakespeare’s portrait of her. In this scene, she herself refers to her “brawling discontent” (937, 4.1.9) about what happened with Angelo. As yet, this lady does not know exactly what the Duke will be getting up to on her behalf, but Isabella soon enters and reports to the Duke how their plan is coming along. She has made the necessary promise to Angelo, and learned the way to her destination.
The Duke calls Mariana back and introduces her to Isabella, whereupon the latter, at the Duke’s request, takes Mariana aside to inform her of the plan that will serve them both. When they return to the Duke, he reassures Mariana that her conduct will be upright, saying, “the justice of your title to him / Doth flourish the deceit” (938, 4.1.73-74).
Act 4, Scene 1 (pp. 936-38, Following a vignette of the jilted Mariana at her home, the Duke in disguise shows up and so does Isabella; these two confer on their plan to trap Angelo, and the Duke introduces the two women. The Duke worries about what his subjects are saying about him in his absence.)
This may be the scene that inspired Millais and Tennyson to create their respective works titled “Mariana.” This lady’s match with Angelo is not ideal—the hypocritical Puritan abandoned her when her dowry fell through.
When we are introduced to Mariana, we hear a boy singing a tale of frustrated romance that suits her predicament. She refers to her “brawling discontent” (937, 4.1.9) about Angelo. Mariana does not know yet what the Duke will do, but Isabella enters and reports to the Duke how their plan is coming along. She has promised Angelo that she will sleep with him, and has learned the way to her destination.
The Duke introduces Marian to Isabella, whereupon the latter, at the Duke’s request, takes Mariana aside to inform her of the plan. When they return, the Duke reassures Mariana: “the justice of your title to him / Doth flourish the deceit” (938, 4.1.73-74).
Act 4, Scene 2 (pp. 938-42, The Provost makes Pompey the executioner’s apprentice, and summons Claudio and Barnardine to tell them they are soon to die. A messenger arrives with a letter containing Angelo’s stubbornly restated order to execute Claudio. The Provost explains Barnardine’s recalcitrance with regard to his execution, but the Duke tells the Provost to execute this man and bring his head instead of Claudio’s to Angelo. When the Provost balks, the Duke (as Lodowick) reassures him and says the letter signifies the Duke’s imminent return.)
The Provost, ever efficient, decides that Pompey might as well assist the hangman Abhorson. Pompey agrees, to avoid a whipping. Abhorson fears that his “mystery” (939, 4.2.23-24) will be tarnished by connection with a pimp.
Claudio and Barnardine are soon brought in and told they must be executed, and the Duke, in disguise, enters soon afterward. He makes as if to defend Angelo from the charge of tyranny, seeing as no reprieve has come yet for Claudio.
Soon, terrible news arrives: Angelo not only hasn’t countermanded the writ of execution, he demands “Claudio’s head sent me by five” (941, 4.2.118).
Barnardine, says the Provost, “apprehends death no more dreadfully / but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past …” (941, 4.2.136-37).
The Duke begins to let the Provost in on his secret plans, and says he will soon find that Angelo is far worse than Barnardine. But Claudio’s execution is to be delayed and Barnardine’s head brought to Angelo instead. Angelo, says the Duke, will soon be receiving strange letters, the contents of which will surprise him.
Act 4, Scene 3 (pp. 943-46, The drunken Barnardine refuses to be reconciled to his execution. The Provost tells the disguised Duke that Ragozine has died—a stroke of luck since he looked like Claudio—so the Duke tells the Provost to present Angelo with Ragozine’s head. The Duke will send letters to Angelo telling him to meet him publicly just outside the city. The Duke falsely tells Isabella that Claudio has been executed, and promises revenge.)
Barnardine is told it is time to be executed. Pompey says, “You must be so / good, sir, to rise and be put to death” (943, 4.3.24-25), but Barnardine is in no mood to comply. Why? He has been drinking, and is in no condition to be counseled spiritually: “I swear I will not die today for any man’s persuasion” (944, 4.3.53).
Barnardine’s attitude threatens to upset the justice system’s apple-cart since its proceedings demand that all concerned in the business of punishment—including criminals—play their designated role and uphold the moral and symbolic order.
The Provost counters the danger that Barnardine’s refusal presents: the pirate Ragozine has just died of a fever, and he looks like Claudio. Why not present his head to Angelo? The Duke, meanwhile, writes a letter to Angelo summoning him just outside the city gates, where he, the Duke, will make a public reappearance.
Isabella enters and is told that Claudio is dead. The Duke tells us that he is doing this to increase Isabella’s amazement: “I will keep her ignorant of her good, / To make her heavenly comforts of despair …” (945, 4.3.102-04). What extreme felix culpa theater!
Isabella is to carry a letter to Friar Peter asking him to come to Mariana’s house this very evening. Soon, Friar Peter will escort Isabella into the presence of Angelo, and she will have her chance to accuse him.
Lucio needles the Duke about his supposed decadence, promising him, “Nay, Friar, / I am a kind of burr, I shall stick” (946, 4.3.167-68). It is hard for a ruler to shake off such loose talk: public opinion, in some form, has been around for millennia.
Pompey the Clown/Pimp is hauled off to prison, where the Provost drafts him into becoming Abhorson’s apprentice. While pimps, madams, and prostitutes were unsavory, they made up part of the Elizabethan and Jacobean economy.
Crime, vice, poverty, and misery exist in relation to the legitimate and “moral” parts of any political and social system. Perhaps the romantic poet William Blake says it best: “Pity would be no more, / If we did not make somebody Poor…”
Act 4, Scene 4 (pp. 946-47, Escalus and Angelo fret over the strange letters sent to them about the Duke’s impending return. Alone, Angelo admits that his guilt over Claudio’s supposed execution is consuming him.)
Escalus is puzzled by the Duke’s letters but Angelo is alarmed. His offense against Isabella is consuming his soul: “This deed unshapes me quite….” He ordered Claudio’s execution because the young man might seek revenge (947, 4.4.26-30).
Angelo confesses guilty knowledge of a fundamental truth: rulers who upset the order of things threaten to unleash chaos in the societies they lead, confounding the purpose of civilization: the maintenance of harmonious, productive order. That alone protects us from the violent fate that Hobbes, in Leviathan (I.xiii.9), captures: life before the social contract is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
But what may most unsettle Angelo is the prospect of getting away with his cruel transgression against Isabella. He does not know what the Duke knows, or what we know. That dramatic irony will soon change when justice goes fully public.
Act 4, Scene 5 (pg. 947, Outside the city, the Duke—now in his own person—tells Friar Peter to gather together those who are loyal to him.)
The Duke tightens his plot to expose Angelo in full public view. He calls together men loyal to him and instructs them how to bring his plan safely into effect.
The play’s final scene will have the character of a play within the larger action, with some characters knowing the truth, and others kept in the dark until the end.
Act 4, Scene 6 (pp. 947-48, Isabella is anxious about her role in the plot, but Mariana tells her to stand fast and accuse Angelo. The plot moves swiftly, with trumpets announcing the Duke’s arrival at the city gates.)
Isabella is still anxious about her role in the drama about to unfold outside the city gates, but Mariana and Friar Peter reassure her.
Act 5, Scene 1 (pp. 948-59, the Duke praises Angelo and Escalus, but Isabella demands justice. The Duke refers her to Angelo, but Isabella keeps up her accusation. The Duke feigns disbelief, and soon she calls for Friar Lodowick. Mariana exposes Angelo for jilting her, explains the plot’s bed-trick details, and unveils herself. The Duke encourages Angelo to judge severely, then exits only to reenter in disguise. Escalus weighs Lucio’s claims about “Friar Lodowick’s” alleged slanders against the Duke, but when Lucio pulls off the Friar’s hood, the Duke is revealed. Angelo confesses, and the Duke orders him to wed Mariana, then condemns him to die. Mariana and Isabella try to intercede, without initial success. The Provost brings in Barnardine, who is now pardoned, along with Claudio. The Duke forgives Angelo, proposes to Isabella, and condemns Lucio to marry a prostitute. At the end, he repeats his proposal to Isabella.)
In arranging for his meeting at the city gates, the Duke sets up a venue for public justice. “Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” (Lord CJ Gordon Hewart, 1924) Spectacle has a role to play in administering justice. The Duke sets Angelo up with fulsome praise in front of the throng: “Oh, your desert speaks loud, and I should wrong it / To lock it in the wards of covert bosom …” (948, 5.1.10-11).
Friar Peter leads Isabella onto the stage, and her plea is all for justice. The Duke refers her to his deputy: “Angelo shall give you justice” (948, 5.1.29). Angelo is rattled and says this grief-stricken woman must have taken leave of her senses. (949, 5.1.40) Isabella hurls seemingly wild accusations, and the Duke accepts Angelo’s judgment.
Isabella’s summation is, “He would not but by gift of my chaste body / To his concupiscible intemperate lust / Release my brother” (950, 5.1.103-05). Isabella claims that she yielded, and since the Duke professes to scorn her, she is ordered off to prison. But first she offers “Friar Lodowick” as her encourager to seek justice.
This mention brings Lucio to the fore, and he claims that this “meddling friar” (951, 5.1.133) has been slandering the Duke. Friar Peter says Angelo has indeed been wronged, but so has Lodowick, by Lucio. Off goes Peter to fetch but Mariana. Mariana explains the bed-trick subplot, and then she unveils herself.
Mariana is branded by Angelo as a loose woman (953, 5.1.226-27). The Duke nudges Angelo to the strictest severity against Mariana and Lodowick.
Like Portia dealing with Shylock, the Duke eggs Angelo on to exact his pound of flesh for the insults levied against him. Friar Peter then goes to fetch Lodowick, and the Duke also makes a brief exit so that he may return as the Friar.
The interlude sees Escalus giving Lucio yet another go at denouncing “Friar Lodowick” as a slanderer, and the Duke himself, in disguise as Lodowick, suddenly appears and promptly turns the accusation back toward Lucio.
Lucio is present at the play’s most significant unmasking: when Lucio rips off “Lodowick’s” hood, there stands the Duke himself, who utters a finely comic reproach: “Thou art the first knave that e’er mad’st a duke” (955, 5.1.358).
The Duke pardons Lucio’s dishonesty, and rounds upon Angelo: “Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudence, / That yet can do thee office?” (956, 5.1.365-66). Angelo says, “Immediate sentence then and sequent death / Is all the grace I beg” (956, 5.1.375-76). That won’t work as comedy, of course. We will need a different dispensation.
The Duke now has his opportunity. He summons Mariana and orders Angelo to marry her immediately. He then repeats the untruth to Isabella that her brother is dead, claiming that the execution outpaced his attempts to stop it. Isabella is expected to take this information patiently, and even to forgive Angelo.
But this same man who is to be forgiven must also himself be executed: after all, says the Duke, “Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; / Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure” (957, 5.1.413-14). Matthew 7: “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again.”
Mariana utters a line that rejects her new husband’s principle of treating money as more important than loyalty or faith: “I crave no other nor no better man” (957, 5.1.429).
Mariana immediately entreats Isabella to take her part in fighting for Angelo’s life. Mariana says, “They say best men are molded out of faults, / And for the most, become much more the better / For being a little bad. So may my husband” (957, 5.1.442-44). As Mariana knows, Angelo has been much more than “a little bad.”
Isabella now she shows us how far she has come from the rigid moralist we met earlier: she pleads, “My brother had but justice, / In that he did the thing for which he died. / For Angelo, his act did not o’ertake his bad intent / And must be buried but as an intent / That perished by the way” (958, 5.1.451-55).
This logic does not differ from the plea from an unsuccessful bank robber that, after all, he did not succeed in his criminal plans, so he should not be charged.
The Duke professes to have thought of yet one more fault, and this time it’s the Provost who receives his attention. This is a pretext for the two of them to reveal that Isabella’s brother, Claudio, is still alive. The Duke now pardons Angelo, and even Barnardine. Isabella and Claudio soon embrace, and the Duke proposes to Isabella.
Last, how to deal with Lucio? The Duke at first sentences him to be whipped and hanged, but relents and orders him to marry the prostitute by whom he fathered a child. To Lucio’s comic plea that “Marrying a punk … is pressing to death, whipping, / and hanging” (959, 5.1.525-26), the Duke answers, “Slandering a prince deserves it” (959, 5.1.527). So it’s retributive and restorative justice.
The Duke ends the play by making his second offer of marriage to Isabella, saying, “I have a motion much imports your good, / Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline, / What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine” (959, 5.1.538-39). He still receives no answer, and critics have made much of this to deepen the “problem play” status of Measure for Measure, but it’s hard to imagine that Isabella is going to walk away from this deal in a huff. Perhaps it goes some way towards restorative justice for the Duke’s offense in tormenting Isabella with claims about her brother’s supposed death.
Isabella has already shown the flexibility necessary to make her an excellent match for Vincentio. (See Marjorie Garber.) The Duke is not tendering an imperious “indecent proposal” like the one Angelo threw down to Isabella; he is courteously asking if Isabella would like to marry him and exercise considerable power in Vienna.
Why is Measure for Measure considered one of Shakespeare’s darker comedies along with All’s Well That Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and The Merchant of Venice? It comes down to the play’s moral complexity. The ending feels somewhat forced, and the play as a whole lacks the sunnier qualities of Shakespearean comedies such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night. By contrast, Measure for Measure comes across as being willing to question the institution of marriage in a not altogether comical way.
In the end, the play brings into stark relief the astute pre-Freudian realization that while marriage is a vital institution that can knit and hold a society together, it is by no means equally efficient at rendering individuals and couples happy.
We can speculate that the prospective marriage between the Duke and Isabella will approach the ideal and that the union between Claudio and Julietta is solid, but the marriage between Angelo and Mariana seems, if not purgatorial, less than ideal, and Lucio’s forced marriage with the prostitute Kate Keepdown, by whom he fathered a child, sounds like a dreadful punishment for both.
Certainly, there are “odd men out” even in the sunnier comedies—characters such as Malvolio and Feste in Twelfth Night, or Jaques in As You Like It, not to mention less than high-minded unions like that of Touchstone the Clown and his country lass Audrey in the same play. But there’s nothing approaching the dark quality of Act 5’s dispensation here in Measure for Measure.
As for the play’s exploration of the concept of justice, that, too, is ambivalent. Many people seem not to be impressed with the Duke’s achievement by the play’s end. Perhaps, though, the sudden commutations he springs on us (along with the necessary marriages, happy or not) may mirror God’s far grander dispensation for the whole of humanity—the divine redemptive process is, after all, often described as sudden, and unmerited on the part of those who receive its great reward.
Perhaps the demand levied on Shakespeare to prepare us elaborately for the resolution is misplaced. Vulnerabilities such as pride, sensuality, and fear of mortality render human beings weak and fallible. “Balance” in administering justice is bound to be elusive, but perhaps the recognition of these defects can pave the way toward the recovery and maintenance of sufficient virtue to keep a society together.
That is a major concern in Shakespeare: how to renew and perpetuate the social order when the material with which one must work is such a frail thing as humankind? What shifts and partial tactics and strategies will serve to protect this order from the hollowing-out that besets so many of the societies in Shakespeare’s darker plays?
At least Measure for Measure is honest in not sugarcoating the shortcomings of attempts to achieve a balance between justice and mercy. Does this honesty make it less of a comedy? Maybe, but anyone who demands perfect fidelity to genre-based conventions in Shakespeare is bound to be frustrated. He might well have considered loyalty to such conventions a betrayal of life in its full reality.
Last Updated on October 10, 2024 by ajd_shxpr