Ways to Think about Shakespeare's Measure for Measure
| An introduction to Leadership and
the Humanities for the USNA Class of 2008, made possible through by a grant
from the Brady Fund.
R. D. Madison Professor English, U.S. Naval Academy |
 |
Jason Vail as Duke
Vincentio in the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express 2004/2005 Ripe with Mischief
Tour production of Measure for Measure.
Photo by Mike Bailey.
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Contents
1. Why a Play?
2. Why Shakespeare?
3. Isn't
Shakespeare Out of Date?
4. This
Is all too Touchy-Feely
5. Why
Read the Play if I've Already Seen It?
6. Why
See the Play if I've Already Read It?
7. This Performance
1. The Duke
2. Escalus
3. Angelo
4. Lucio
5. Mistress
Overdone
6. Pompey
7. Claudio
8. Elbow
9. Isabella
10. Provost
11. Juliet
12. Mariana
13. Abhorson
14. Barnardine
III. What Happens in the Play (Synopsis)
IV. Ideas in the Play (Themes)
1. Sin and
Crime
2. Sex
and Asceticism
3. Religion
and Government
4. Leadership
and Power
5. Justice
and Mercy
V. Allegory
VII. Resources
In 2004, the Brady family provided a fund to help establish the U.S. Naval Academy as a national center for the discussion of the connection between Leadership and the study of Humanities. Administered by the Department of English, the first offering of the Brady/USNA partnership is a performance of William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, an enduring study of responsibility and integrity at every level of society.
This handbook hopes to address some of the many questions raised by the play. It will help those who witness a performance of the play as well as those who read it as a text. The independent sections are labeled so the curious instructor or midshipman can easily find specific grounding for his or her own exploration. Some sections speak specifically to issues of literature, while others speak specifically to questions of leadership. Taken together, the whole handbook explores the role of humanities in the training of officers.
The citations in this discussion are keyed to The Arden Shakespeare. Line numbers may vary slightly from edition to edition.
"The play's the thing," Shakespeare's Hamlet said, "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
Why not a film, or one more brief, or a memorandum? Or even a book--aren't classes about books?
Nothing is as engaging as live theatre. A film may at first seem more realistic, but does the actor in the film respond to you when you cheer or jeer or fall asleep? A book may give you time for study, but mids may find their rates interfering with the speeches. And what happens to the emotional build-up when you have to put the book down to do a chow call? A memo may be pithy in its contents, but does it engage you? We use the word "engage" for both literature and war: when you are engaged you have an encounter that affects you on many different levels: physical, psychological, moral, intellectual. "Audience engagement" is when you're as aroused by performance as if you were there. And with good theatre--the theatre as developed by Shakespeare and his friends--you ARE there.
"No writer has hitherto appeared who possesses in a more eminent degree than Shakespeare, the power of imitating the passions," wrote William Richardson in 1774. He may sound a little old-fashioned to us, but he did write two hundred years after Shakespeare was born. He said that Shakespeare was able to show people acting more realistically than any other writer. That's a big claim, given that the western literary tradition also includes Homer and the Bible and Dante, and other literary traditions have such representations of the human condition as the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran.
About five hundred years ago in western Europe, a fundamental change began to take place in the perception of the way the world worked. People began to see the universe as man-centered instead of God-centered. This didn't mean they stopped believing in God--far from it. But it did mean that a person's approach to God proceeded from the gift of understanding people were given. People believed they could change their state on earth as well as in the hereafter by their own behavior and belief.
Of course there were reactions to this change, as well, but in general a new spirit that today we call "humanism" swept Europe. Shakespeare encapsulated the new appreciation of the potential of mankind:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals-- . . . [Act II, sc. 2, 303- 307]
No one before Shakespeare wrote about the full range of human potential because, on the whole, no one yet believed in it. No one since Shakespeare has exhibited such a range of human potential--for good or for evil.
How did Shakespeare exhibit this range of human potential? Through characters represented on a stage. And here is another aspect of why Shakespeare is great: in a play there's no narrator to tell you anything: people have conversations. And it's through these conversations that Shakespeare's characters reveal this huge diversity of human potential, and do it well enough to convince the audience that, yes, this is how people really feel and act. "Imitating the passions," as Richardson wrote, really means presenting characters you can believe in.
"Passions" also has another meaning: "sufferings." The things that move us most in a play are the sufferings the characters reveal--and once again Shakespeare heads the list with characters like Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth and Othello. You might have to go back two thousand years to find humanity suffering like that in literature. And remember--you're feeling all this because of two short hours of conversation.
Finally, Shakespeare's conversations are not just tossed out, but take the shape of art: most of them are in some form of verse, usually unrhymed iambic pentameter. It's very artistic, and yet we hardly notice it when we listen to a play because--when it's spoken well--it sounds so real. (It's like watching the flat image on a movie screen or TV: of course it isn't realistic at all; it's highly contrived art. But it works, doesn't it, to convince us of its realism?)
3. ISN'T SHAKESPEARE OUT OF DATE?
Well, all language changes over the course of time. You do have to make an effort to "hear" Shakespeare when you go to a play. The better the actors, though, the more you realize that Shakespeare's language is actually very close to ours--it ought to be; he's been shaping our language for four hundred years without a break.
But you also discover that the human problems haven't changed much. We call the problems in a play the "themes," and themes in literature and leadership, at least as long as they've been recorded, haven't changed, really, at all.
4. THIS IS ALL TOO TOUCHY-FEELY
The ancient philosopher Aristotle said that there were three main lines to pursue an argument: the rational, the ethical, and the emotional. And much as renaissance humanism based on Aristotle wanted to emphasize the first, Aristotle recognized that emotional forces were the most powerful. Shakespeare knew that philosophy was the rational sorting out of truth, but he also knew that poetry was the vehicle for moving people towards truth. Shakespeare didn't think that poetry was all about valentines and sensitivity--instead he would have defined poetry as a form of language that excited the feelings for a particular purpose. Of course, he also believed that poetry, to be effective, ought to have particular rhythmic forms. He may or may not have been right about this, but he was certainly right about how people responded emotionally to stories dramatized on stage in front of them.
Shakespeare wouldn't have distinguished between "manly prose" and "effeminate verse": in fact, Shakespeare thought it was more "noble" to speak in verse.
Shakespeare did have to deal with the notion of Spartan "manliness": who's allowed to weep in public or acknowledge feeling. Shakespeare creates great characters who exemplify all sides of this issue: on the whole, it is part of his exploration of humanity. But the form in which he does it--the poetry of the theatre--really didn't develop its reputation for extreme sentimentality until long after Shakespeare and his theatrical tradition were gone.
The great scene in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" of the prince who only wants to sing would have been incomprehensible to a playgoer of Shakespeare's day.
5. WHY READ THE PLAY IF I'VE ALREADY SEEN IT?
So we can learn more or learn something different. In the midst of an experience--military or theatrical--we usually learn through our feelings. Only through subsequent reflection do we usually learn through reasoning things out. And there's a lot that's said that we simply miss--this is a fact of oral communication, not just playgoing.
6. WHY SEE THE PLAY IF I'VE ALREADY READ IT?
Two centuries ago, some readers thought no performance could adequately express the richness of Shakespeare, and therefore his work could only be appreciated by reading. This view may have been in part a response to the prevailing taste in theatrical production, which often strayed far from Shakespeare's text and always varied from the intimate conditions of Shakespeare's own theatres.
Today it is generally acknowledged that performance brings out more than it leaves out, although some directors still have fairly wacky concepts that may seem to skew a play. Such a focus may be either a challenge to, or a demonstration of, the universality of Shakespeare.
A live production is much more than a director's reading of a play: it is the result of every actor's reading as well, and is almost always richer and more complex than any single reader's vision of the work.
Shenandoah Shakespeare is a traveling repertory company--much like the traveling players in Hamlet. Their personnel changes from year to year--sometimes the company is very good; sometimes it is much weaker. They like to emphasize language: you won't see fancy special effects or huge sets with elaborate lighting. In fact, you won't see any of that at all.
This is a play about a lot of questions, and one of those questions is how to behave sexually. In a play, where ideas are represented by realistic characters, you may meet people and behavior you don't approve of or like. When the Bible says that Abraham went into his tent and knew Sarah, we get an image in our minds that may be more or less graphic, but it's not something that thrusts itself into our perception the way actions in a play can. It's important to remember that what happens in a play is also still in the realm of ideas. Nobody really dies, nobody really has sex.
To get worked up about an idea or a word as if it were the real thing is a psychological phenomenon called "reification." All it means is making something real out of something that isn't. But a lot of people--conservatives and liberals alike--have trouble processing repugnant language or ideas when they're presented in drama, or even out loud in a discussion.
A good theatre company will strive for psychological realism, but is not likely to be fooled into thinking that explicit sex or violence will be an improvement on Shakespeare. Where is the interpretive line? Finding that line will tell us much about the play, the actors, and ourselves.
The Duke is the ruling leader of Vienna in this play, but he decides he has been too lax in enforcing the law. He pretends to go on a journey, leaving command to his friends and advisors Escalus and--especially--Angelo. Then he hides out in Vienna to see how things go. He hopes that fresh leadership will be more effective in enforcing laws, especially ones regarding morality (sex).
In the play the Duke becomes a mysterious, almost god-like figure as he manipulates the action without revealing his authority.
At the very end, the Duke further complicates things be asking the persistently virginal Isabella to marry him. His final acts in the play all lead to forgiveness--not the goal he seemed to set out with.
Key quote:
"Reason thus with life: if I do lose thee, I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep." [Act III, sc. 1, 6-8]
Escalus is the most experienced counselor in Vienna. Thus, when the Duke names him second in command to Angelo at the start of the play, some eyebrows might be raised. But Escalus accepts this role without a murmur: his sense of duty is clearly greater than his pride.
Escalus is old: one wonders if the Duke has passed him over solely because of age, or if he has some other reason. Should Escalus have insisted on precedence, or declined the commission? Of course, there would have been no play if Escalus had been chosen--but the actor playing Escalus would probably show awareness of the choices before him.
Esacalus's report of the character of the Duke as temperate and introspective sets up Lucio's slanderous description later.
Escalus counsels Angelo to prune the branches of vice, not cut down the offender entirely.
Key quote:
"Ay, but yet let us be keen, and rather cut a little, than fall, and bruise to death." [Act II, sc. 1, 4-6]
Angelo is the most threatening individual in the play--once he makes up his mind to ravish Isabella, it would be safe to call him the villain of the play. His course to that villainy is the key progression of the play: is he really as good as everyone says at the start of the play? Has he never been tempted before? Is he corrupt all along? Is he simply human? Where is the line between humanity and vice, purity and corruption? Is Angelo's agony real as he realizes what is happening to him?
Key quotes:
"'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another thing to fall." [Act II, sc. 1, 17-18]
"Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?" [Act II, sc. 2, 38]
"What's this? What's this? Is this her fault or mine? The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most, ha? . . . Ever till now when men were fond, I smil'd, and wondered how." [Act II, sc. 2, 163-164, 186-187]
"O heavens, why does my blood thus muster to my heart, making both it unable for itself and dispossessing all my other parts of necessary fitness?" [Act II, sc. 4, 19-23]
Lucio is a gentleman, but one of venial habits. He has spent so much time at the whorehouses that he has contracted several kinds of venereal disease. He likes to argue for the sake of argument, and is careless of the truth--especially about other people's characters. Lucio is one of the kinds of individuals whose vice the Duke hopes to curb--wanton sexual activity. Lucio nevertheless is trusted by some of the characters and has some important (and probably true) observations about life. He seems to genuinely reverence virginity, even while he despises Angelo for his ascetic lifestyle. He seems totally accepting of human nature, and is most at odds with those characters who would deny human nature.
Key quote:
"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt." [Act 1, sc. 4, 77-79]
Mistress Overdone is a bawd--that is, she keeps a whorehouse and has probably seen service herself. On the extremes of sexual purity, she stands at one end with Isabella at the other, and Juliet and Marianna perhaps somewhere in the middle--if there is a middle ground.
Key quote:
"Your honour is accounted a merciful man." [Act 3, sc. 2, 185-186]
Pompey is a pimp for Mistress Overdone. He is a comic character, related to medieval personifications of Vice as venial (not mortal) sin. He believes that sex is an irresistible fact of life. But, if society insists, he will give up pandering to learn the more legal trade of executing people.
Key quote:
"Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city? . . . Truly sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then." [Act II, sc. 1, 227-228]
Claudio is betrothed to Juliet--that is, they have promised to marry each other but have not undergone the public rites of marriage. Claudio gets Juliet pregnant, and for that act is condemned to die under Angelo's new rigorous enforcement of the laws against fornication. Claudio is willing to accept death rather than dishonor his sister--but he does waiver as he weighs the consequences in more existential--not religious--terms.
Key quote:
"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; to lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit to bath in fiery floods, or to reside in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; to be imprison'd in the viewless winds and blown with restless violence round about the pendant world: or to be worse than worst of those that lawless and incertain thought imagine howling,--'tis too horrible. The weariest and most loathed worldly life that age, ache, penury and imprisonment can lay on nature, is paradise to what we fear of death." [Act 3, sc. 1, 117-131]
Elbow is a stupid constable, a favorite comic character with Shakespeare, and his imprecision in thinking and speaking contributes to the dilemma of the extent to which the agents of the law create respect or contempt for law itself. This is part of the larger question in the play of whether law has any existence apart from its enforcement--or disregard--by individual people.
Although this type of petty official is routinely lampooned in his plays, Shakespeare usually vindicates the intentions of these individuals, since they do act in the name of the state.
Key quote:
"If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke's officer." [Act II, sc. 1, 173-175]
Isabella is about to enter a convent. She is a virgin, and seeks to be restrained from intercourse--sexual and otherwise--with the world. She chooses to live a pure and holy life. She abhors fornication, and is torn between her duty to her brother and her love of chastity.
Key quote:
"Better it were a brother died at once, than that a sister, by redeeming him, should die for ever." [Act II, sc. 4, 106-108]
The Provost is in charge of the prison, where much of the action takes place. He has a powerful sense of compassion, but he only disobeys orders when he has powerful evidence of the Duke's ultimate approval. Is he therefore a good official or a bad one? At the end of the play he is both fired and promoted.
Key quote:
"Th'one has my pity; not a jot the other, being a murderer, though he were my brother." [Act IV, sc. 2, 59-60]
Juliet is Claudio's pregnant fiancee. In her confession to the Duke (disguised as friar), she seems to accept full responsibility for her offence, which she acknowledges to be a sin.
Key quote:
"I do repent me as it is an evil, and take the shame with joy." [Act II, sc. 3, 35-36]
At one time engaged to Angelo, Mariana has been dumped by him because she lost her dowery--that is, Angelo had been in it for the money. The Duke's knowledge of this transaction--revealed only halfway through the play--may in retrospect alter our regard for Angelo, and might even raise the question whether the Duke is deliberately testing Angelo as part of his plan of reform.
Mariana's final appeal for Angelo's life sets forth an Aristotelian philosophy of moderation in contrast to the absolutes of life and death, of virginity and sexual knowledge.
Key quote:
"They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad." [Act V, sc. 1, 437-439]
Abhorson is an executioner and is part of the comic plot, although he is the one who would carry out one of the two most threatening actions of the play. He doesn't want to work with Pompey: he looks down on the pimp, while others look down on the executioner. His character emphasizes the parallel threats of beheading as deflowering and beheading as execution.
Key quote:
"A bawd, sir? Fie upon him, he will discredit our mystery." [Act IV, sc. 2, 26-27]
Barnardine is murderer who, having renounced everything, has no attachment to life or fear of death. Originally intended to be the substitute for Claudio, he is such an attractive representation of one kind of philosophical independence that Shakespeare spares him.
Key quote:
"I will not consent to die this day, that's certain." [Act IV, sc. 3, 54-55]
III. WHAT HAPPENS IN THE PLAY (SYNOPSIS)
Act I scene 1: In order to put new life into the stale laws of Vienna, the Duke of Vienna hands temporary control of the city over to the aged Escalus and the virtuous Angelo.
Act I scene 2: As word of the tighter enforcement of the law spreads through Vienna, Claudio is carried off to jail to be executed for getting his girlfriend pregnant. Claudio asks his friend Lucio to tell his sister Isabella what's going on.
Act I scene 3: The Duke tells a friar about his plan to pretend to be absent so Angelo can clean up the town. Meanwhile he'll disguise himself as another friar and watch.
Act I scene 4: Isabella, through her love of strict abstinence, is about to enter a convent when Lucio asks her to intervene with Angelo for Claudio's life.
Act II scene 1: Elbow complains to the officials about Mistress Overdone's brothel. Pompey argues the innocence of his profession.
Act II scene 2: Isabella meets Angelo and pleads for her brother's life. Angelo feels the power of lust and contemplates sexual extortion.
Act II scene 3: The Duke begins his secret manipulation of the characters in the prison by hearing the confession of the pregnant Juliet, who repents her sexual trespass.
Act II scene 4: Isabella and Angelo meet again, and he propositions her. She refuses, believing that her brother will agree that her honor is worth more than his life.
Act III scene 1: The Duke tells Claudio there is no hope for him and he should prepare to die. Isabella arrives and tells Claudio what Angelo has offered and she has refused. Claudio agrees with her decision but then has second thoughts. The Duke--who has been eaves-dropping-- tells them he has a plan for saving Claudio by substituting Mariana (Angelo's rejected fiancee) for Isabella in the proposed sexual encounter.
Act III scene 2: Pompey is sent to prison for being a pimp. Lucio speaks frivolously and insultingly to the disguised Duke. Having seen Pompey and Lucio, and heard about Angelo from a reliable source, the Duke ponders leadership.
Act IV scene 1: The disguised Duke visits Mariana, and when Isabella arrives they set up the "bed trick."
Act IV scene 2: Pompey is named assistant to the executioner Abhorson. The Duke advises that Claudio will be pardoned, but an order arrives for Claudio's death anyway. The disguised Duke produces letters from his actual self convincing the Provost (the jailor) to wait a little longer.
Act IV scene 3: The nihilist Barnardine refuses to let himself be executed because he is hung over. Another prisoner has died, and the latter's head is substituted for Claudio's as proof of execution. The Duke lets Isabella believe that her brother has been executed despite her apparent concession.
Act IV scene 4: Angelo has a philosophical crisis when he realizes how rotten he has become. He and Escalus anticipate the return of the Duke, who has requested that any complaints about the interim leadership should be addressed immediately upon his return.
Act IV scene 5: The Duke discusses his plan to return with a friar and hints that he may act strangely.
Act IV scene 6: Isabella and Mariana prepare to denounce Angelo.
Act V scene 1: The Duke returns to Vienna, and Isabella denounces Angelo. The Duke goes out for a second and returns disguised as a friar who supports Isabella's story. Angelo orders the disguised Duke arrested for slander, but the Duke reveals himself and commands Angelo to marry Mariana and then suffer death. Mariana and Isabella plead in vain for the life of Angelo, and the Duke begins to question the Provost. The provost produces Barnardine and Claudio, whom the Duke pardons. The Duke proposes marriage to Isabella, and then pardons Angelo. The Duke condemns Lucio to marriage, whipping, and hanging, but relents and withdraws the last two penalties. He repeats his proposal to Isabella, and the play ends.
IV. IDEAS IN THE PLAY (THEMES)
In his Arden edition (Methuen, 1965) of Measure for Measure, editor J. W. Lever identifies three main strains of plot in the play: the corrupt magistrate, the disguised ruler, the substituted bedmate. Shakespeare found these elements in earlier literature and adapted them to his own play. The play is sometimes called a "dark comedy" or a "problem play" because Shakespeare raises looming moral and ethical questions--but doesn't really answer them by the end of the fifth act. Lever identifies some "problems" as justice and mercy, grace and nature, creation and death. As we read the play more specifically for our own time than for Shakespeare's, we might employ other terms to identify the themes in the play: sin and crime, sex and asceticism, religion and government, leadership and power.
We might ask ourselves whether Shakespeare really intended us to think about these things as we watched his play. Well, yes--he probably did. There are plenty of plays that lack introspection--in which characters act in arbitrary ways or without reflection. But part of Shakespeare's "mimesis"--the art of mirroring the real world--included the agony of men and women thinking about their own natures and the world they live in.
At one point in the play, Juliet confesses that her promiscuity with Claudio is a sin. At another point in the play, the Provost seems to distinguish between the sin of Claudio and the crime of Barnardine, the murderer. The Provost is ready to execute both, but pities only Claudio.
Who gets to define what is sin and what is crime? Who gets to decide who has jurisdiction in punishing sin or crime or enforcing behaviors that might be described as legal or moral?
In this play, the underlying assumption is that the Duke--or his designee--has the authority to regulate morality. Is the definition of sin and crime also vested in the Duke? Or is this some cultural assessment within which all the characters somehow participate?
The question of whether the behavior under scrutiny in the play is sin or crime is accompanied by a very forceful strain in the play that argues that certain behaviors are part of our very nature: according to what dogmas, then, is human nature sinful or criminal? Is sin--or crime--self-evident?
To what extent, then, is the state responsible for controlling or modifying human nature? Should the lustful be castrated, as Pompey suggest is the only way to eliminate lust? Should the violent be lobotomized, as has been practiced in our own lifetimes, or should children's tempers be controlled by medication? And who has the right or authority to make the decision?
Who decided that Claudio deserved death but Juliet didn't? What would be the elements of such a decision? How do we treat such transgressors today at USNA? Who makes the rules? By what process?
In this play, who is sinful and who is criminal? What difference does that make to you?
Sexual license and sexual phobia: two opposite and, literally speaking, equally unhealthy ways to practice (or not practice) sex. Why is sex such a threat to authority? Why are some people so scared of it? Virtue or neurosis? Why are others so overwhelmed by it? Chemisty or evil? Why do otherwise sensible leaders cast themselves on the shoals of puritanism or sex?
Is it too obvious to say that most people enjoy sex? Many people acknowledge that sex is a powerful organic force in our lives: we talk about "sex drive." Many people acknowledge that sex is the only way our species continues its existence--that many acts of sex result in new acts of creation that sustain humanity.
Western culture, particularly American culture, celebrates sex and sexuality. Is this because an immoral few wish to impose their view of sex on the rest of the culture, or is it the recognition by important dispensers of culture that sex is indeed one of the most powerful forces in our society?
Many other people--even some who privately enjoy sex--are uncomfortable with the role of sex in our culture. Still others react even more antagonistically to sex--attempting to eradicate all public--and even private--presence of sexuality.
Those who view sexual activity as undesirable and who strive to eliminate it from their own lives are frequently labeled "ascetic," although asceticism broadly is the rejection of all pleasure. Those who carry this desire to eliminate joy beyond their own lives to their cultures at large are frequently termed "puritans" (with a small "p," to distinguish this use from a strictly religious one).
Asceticism is older than Christianity. John the Baptist may be viewed as a rejecter of the material pleasures of life. In Measure for Measure, Angelo is initially characterized as an ascetic, cold-blooded man who feels no pleasures. Of course, as the play progresses he does feel the temptations (the imaginary pleasures), and in his consummation with Mariana, he is supposed actually to have felt them. One might ask, then, whether any human being--even one so devoted as Angelo, could ever be truly ascetic?
Asceticism applies to women as well as men. Isabella is an ascetic--as are all religious professionals who have taken a vow of celibacy (that is, who have renounced sexual activity). All kinds of religions have ascetic strains to the extent that individuals within them reject or minimize their interaction with the physical world and its pleasures. And, of course, one could be an ascetic without any particular religious basis--just as one could be very religious and still have a vigorous sex life.
In Shakespeare's society asceticism was primarily associated with three things: celibate Catholic orders (as the Order of Saint Clare that Isabella is about to enter at the start of the play), Protestant Puritanism (usually ridiculed by Elizabethan playwrights whose very livelihood was threatened by the institutional rejection of such pleasures as play-going), and the cult of virginity surrounding Queen Elizabeth. We still have the first two, but the cult of virginity--aside from the "just say no" movement (perhaps really a branch of contemporary Puritanism)--now seems to have been replaced by the cult of sexual exuberance personified (perhaps to the point of self-parody) by Britney Spears. Of course, the two attractions intersect for us, just as they did for Angelo when he mused that no mere slut could have attracted him, while he found the virgin Isabella irresistible. Even the Duke at the end of the play implies a sexual union with Isabella with his offer of marriage.
One could think of virginity (or chastity) as the decision of the individual how he or she will behave, as opposed to puritanism, the decision of the community on how other people will behave. This might lead us to explore two levels of sexual responsibility--one for ourselves and one for the community. Two primary responsibilities--public and private--touched on in the play are disease and conception: same as today. Shakespeare, by the way, had gotten his future wife pregnant before they were married--as no doubt he recalled while he wrote the play. Maybe this is why we hear so little from Juliet.
Should one even try to control sexual urges (Angelo, Isabella)? Should one give in to them entirely (Lucio, Mistress Overdone)? Is there a definable or appropriate middle ground? How would one determine what it is? Does that determination remain with the individual or must it be external? What are the levels of personal commitment and responsibility exhibited in the play? And how are those acted upon by institutional forces?
Ironically, perhaps, the Duke (the head of the government) assumes the guise of a friar (a religious professional) to achieve his ends in this play. Shakespeare's choice seems to minimize the role of the church in establishing morality or executing judgment--this is not, after all, a play about a religious inquisition. But the religious figures in the play (whether they are real or not) do seem to be more able to seek a less literal (or more merciful) justice than the state--at least as headed up by Angelo. Thus the disguised Duke seems to insure the failure of the very thing he went into hiding to promote: a stricter enforcement of morality in Vienna.
One assumes that everyone in a Shakespeare play--unless otherwise identified--is historically Catholic. That is, Shakespeare sets so many of his plays in Europe--especially Italy--that we assume a Catholic context (He even uses the Italian name "Vienna" instead of the local version "Wien").
In this Shakespeare play there is also no reason to suppose that there is any real discrepancy between the goals of church and state. There is no question of religious toleration in this play--although this was becoming a huge question in Shakespeare's England--because there is no other visible religious choice. There is, however, a very strong dose of humanism operating within the portrayal of both church and state that questions the nature of man and therefore his governance and salvation. Thus, although everyone is a Catholic, you can have good Catholics and bad Catholics (perhaps Escalus and Angelo, you can have skepticism and piety (perhaps Claudio and Isabella).
In Shakespeare's England--as in the modern United States--there was very little support for real freedom of inquiry in either politics or religion. The Queen was the head of state, and she was Protestant. There were no other official options, although you can be sure she and her advisors had spirited debates about policy in both areas. The state was the church, and if you thought otherwise you might find yourself beheaded or burned. Within the Anglican Church (in Shakespeare's day very much Catholicism without the Latin or the Pope) there were still tensions of Puritanism versus church tradition. But Jews and Moors were right out. And atheism was right behind--much like being a Branch Davidian or neo-Druid today. Some religions are more equal than others. How far does religious freedom go in our society as a defense for group sex or drug use?
In Shakespeare's day the newly emerging Puritans (capital "P" this time) had the protection of the Protestant Queen but still sought to manipulate the government to eliminate all but strictly "religious" (according to them) pleasure from English society. They succeeded, too, a few decades later--when they started a revolution, beheaded the king, and ruled the country for fifteen years. With their even more rigorous identification of church and state, they did achieve the extinction of the English theater as it was known. But even they couldn't stop sex.
In universalizing asceticism, Protestant theology engaged human nature on a great battlefield. By stigmatizing earthly pleasures as diabolical and human nature as fallen, they argued the unregenerate condition of man in a self-proving but self-contradictory form: it's rather hard to follow the Judeo-Christian command to "go forth and multiply" when you've rejected sex. That leads to a built-in difficulty, where exponents need to find a border at which the same activity changes from moral to immoral, form virtue to vice, from blessing to sin.
Western culture, especially Anglo-American culture, has seemed to have a much bigger problem with sex than many other cultures. Not that other governments and religions don't develop their own sexual problems (genital mutilation quickly comes to mind), but ours seem to have the greatest phobia of sex alongside the greatest attraction for it. Are we biologically different than other peoples? Doubtful. What else is going on? Is this the legacy of religious asceticism? The legacy of humanism (making people and not gods the philosophical center of the universe)? The legacy of science (the problem was around long before Darwin, but seeing mankind as just another animal species creates moral differences)? Anglo-American governments seem to be much more concerned with controlling sex than most other governments--even more so than most of the churches that exist under the governments. Have certain puritanical religious groups simply exerted a disproportionate influence on Anglo-American governments, or is there a different basis for our cultural obsession with sex and its repression?
What is the appropriate relationship of government to public morality? What is the Constitutional relationship of government of public morality?
And what is the appropriate relationship of the Department of Defense to the regulation of human sexuality?
Whatever the individual law in question, most people would find Angelo guilty of two things: the abuse of his power in extorting sex (or anything else) from a subordinate, and gross hypocrisy in sending a man to death for exactly the same thing he was attempting to do himself. Whether we call Angelo's guilt sin or crime, not many people would feel comfortable running up against an Angelo in our on chain of command or government. But despite the universal reaction against such behavior, it might still be useful to ask a couple of philosophical questions:
Isn't all use of power abusive? Isn't that what power means? "Pay me tribute or I'll seize your castle and lands and throw you into a dungeon" might mean the same thing as "Failure to pay in a timely manner may result in a penalty of six months in jail or a fine of $10,000 or both."
Usually the abuse of power has to do with wealth (such as, for instance, handing government contracts to companies with whom officials have a money interest). In a culture as sexually charged as ours we might also see the abuse of power connected with sexual favors. In some cases, it is clear, the abuse of power occurs for its own sake--simply because an individual enjoys throwing his or her weight around. Behavior in the first two examples is usually classed as criminal; in the third case it is usually regarded as sick.
But the most famous observation about power in our culture suggests that power lust is not deviant behavior, but human nature: when Lord Acton, a British historian, remarked that "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he was considering many examples of political history and human nature, not just a play by Shakespeare. So who should be entrusted with power? On the one hand, it seems hopeless to expect virtue from those in power; on the other hand, without some form of government (and therefore, one presumes, power), one has anarchy. Is there a line of abuse that needs to be tolerated, or is Lord Acton wrong--and all we need to do is find the right "untouchable" candidates? Or is it possible to have a form of government that isn't based on power?
At the very beginning of the play are a couple of lines that may be lost as we try to adjust our ears to the language of Shakespeare and the actors. Only a dozen lines into the play, the Duke praises Escalus's understanding of "The nature of our people, our city's institutions, and the terms for common justice." This three-pronged identification of the knowledge needed to govern well might apply as well to Angelo: is it all one needs to govern well? Obviously not: there has to be some level of integrity, some sense of what the appropriate thing to do with this knowledge is. The Duke simply believes in Escalus--and yet doesn't give him the highest power. This he gives to Angelo, who immediately says, "Let there be some more test made of my metal." That early in the play Angelo reveals a level of self-awareness that is remarkable for its anticipation of his failure when he is tempted, yet the Duke does not seem to understand Angelo's hesitation: "No more evasion," he says.
It would be interesting to imagine Angelo as a young man--perhaps even the teen-age son of the Duke--with a task assigned to him about which he is not all sure, but which he seems destined to assume and can't refuse. What difference would that make--that this is just an untried kid groping his way toward leadership. And failing?
This scenario also raises question about the Duke's leadership. How has the Duke arrived at his choice--a choice which nearly results in much harm. One of the lingering questions of the play is whether the Duke is deliberately testing Angelo. Or has he made an arbitrary decision--one obviously made without consulting the people involved, and one that skirts disaster? Shakespeare doesn't give us much background to this play: only that the Duke says he wants to clean up Vienna. Instead, perhaps Shakespeare wants us to speculate about the conditions under which the Duke operates.
Of course the Duke's Vienna is an imaginary one, but the conflicts of power and leadership are too eminently real. The Duke ultimately removes Angelo from power--as would have happened upon his return anyway--but forbears to punish him further. The Duke, at least, uses power as a tool of resolution rather than a weapon of abuse. But while we often talk about the power of justice, we rarely hear about the power of mercy.
Perhaps the most frustrating kind of leadership (at least to followers) is inconsistent leadership. When a leader is consistently lenient (the Duke before his departure) or consistently severe (Angelo during his tenure as deputy) followers at least know what to expect, however right or wrong the actions or policies of the leader. But inconsistent leadership frustrates followers, and their chaotic attempts to respond to the oscillations of leadership may contribute to an overall worse situation than either of the extremes. On the other hand, the chaos of uncertainty may be less detrimental than outright evil. The Duke wanted to avoid the appearance of inconsistency when he assigned the job of cleaning up Vienna to Angelo, and this may or may not have been the best policy, whatever the merits or failures of Angelo.
In naval leadership in particular, the two most famous mutinies in both the American and the British navies both arose in large part because of inconsistent leadership. In the case of the Bounty, Bligh's outbursts of temper contrasted with a policy of leniency to create unbearable uncertainty among his people. In the case of the Somers, Mackenzie's habitual kindliness was transformed (no one really understands how) into a juggernaut of judgment that resulted in the hanging of three of his men. In each case, an uneven application of power resulted in tragedy.
In his most famous play, Shakespeare has Hamlet ask his steward to attend to the needs of the traveling players. Polonius replies, "My lord, I will use them according to their desert." "God's bodkin, man," Hamlet replies, "much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping?" (Act IV, sc. 2, 523-525). And everyone remembers Portia's speech about mercy from The Merchant of Venice: "It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His sceptre shows the force of temporal power," she says, "but mercy is above this sceptred sway . . . it is an attribute to God himself." Portia reminds Shylock that "Though justice be thy plea, consider this, that in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation" (Act IV, sc. 1, 184-196).
And yet the whole essence of drama is at least poetic justice. Villains are set up to be villains, and we enjoy their fall when justice catches up with them. We enjoy seeing Angelo exposed as a hypocrite--but how do we feel about his pardon? We see Claudio and Juliet acknowledge their sin--but do we enjoy the threat of justice according to the law of Vienna? Is it simply a trick of the playwright to make us prefer justice for some characters and mercy for others, or is there something inherently different about the sins or crimes described?
There are some students of human nature who would argue that our sense of justice is not cultural but much more deeply implanted in our psyches--some scientists even describe the sense of justice or injustice exhibited by animals. That, of course, may not make any difference to the moral or legal nature of justice. And no one, however, seems to have demonstrated the presence of a sense of mercy in animals.
It may be that there is no real action of justice or mercy in the play until the very end--when mercy is disguised as justice and is applied to Angelo.
The very title of this play--Measure for Measure--suggests an Old-Testament kind of justice: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The actual phrasing, however, come from the gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, and is somewhat different in intent: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." This, of course is a version of the Golden Rule: behave the way you want people to behave to you. But by Shakespeare's day the language had become proverbial and was shorthand for old-fashioned justice. In the Arden edition, Lever points out that the language also occurred in another proverb: "He that forsakes measure, measure forsakes him." That is, people who become immoderate will get an immoderate result. This idea, old as Aristotle, suggests that moderation in all things--whether carnal delights or the pursuit of absolute justice--results in the Golden Mean.
Would that also mean moderation in mercy?
At some point the play ceases being merely a play and becomes a lesson. If a playwright intends a whole series of symbolical meanings or lessons that really have no literal relation to the text, then perhaps the playwright has created an allegory. Measure for Measure is probably not allegorical--its lessons really are directly related to what happens in the play--but Shakespeare's audience was attuned to "higher meanings" and perhaps we should be too.
The lessons of personal self-government and even the basic leadership lessons of the play are probably self-evident, but when we begin to talk about the question of "kingship" (a huge concern to Shakespeare's age) we might do well to look at some of the historical contexts of the play.
Shakespeare, like us, did not live in a stable world. His country had suffered through a hundred-year-long civil war and a hundred years of flip-flopping religious persecution following it. Probably the most important thing a ruler could give the people was stability, and the greatest stability probably came in the form of the clearest succession of governments. This is difficult to achieve when your queen is a virgin. Even though Elizabeth achieved a remarkable degree of stability (comparatively speaking) during her reign, there was nevertheless a great deal of psychological anxiety about the future. When--about the time this play was written--James I became king of England, the worry about the succession was replaced by worry about what kind of king he would be.
Regents in Shakespeare's England were intimately connected with religion: they had to be, since they claimed to rule by the grace of God. In theory, at least, there could be no difference between the goals of the king and the goals of God. The distinction between the Church and secular government was an uneasy one. Shakespeare did not spend much time writing about how the Church should act, and he didn't spend much time directly exploring the nature of God--Hamlet and King Lear, the two plays that come closest to doing that, may owe their popularity to an increasing tendency to explore the nature of being itself (ontology) in philosophy and literature. But most of the time, Shakespeare stuck to the state.
Nevertheless, one might easily read the play as exploring the nature of God's judgment and mercy in the world, with the figure of the Duke representing a god figure who moves in and out of direct contact with his creation. Whether you go on to read Escalus as the Holy Spirit, Angelo as Satan, or Isabella as the intervening mother of God are all interesting directions--but one should remember that when you move beyond the literal meaning of the text (for any interpretation) you move beyond the authority of the text, and all is speculation.
Although it is hard to separate all the foregoing discussion from a discussion of Shakespeare's art, there are some specific points to be made here. By definition an artist seeks to shape materials in a specific way. The artist may be more or less successful but is usually given credit for whatever we find of value in the art. We assume the intentions of the artist, while acknowledging that readers, performers, and witnesses of a play may discover far more than the artist consciously worked out during the creative process. An artist may even reveal certain things about himself or the world that are not at all intentional.
In any work of art, the artist tries to manipulate the spectator or audience. We might not, after all, agree with the pre-set conditions of the play, but part of the playwright's job is to get us to accept them for the time being, and to judge characters according to the beliefs of the artist, not necessarily our own. Thus, in two different plays (or movies) about the same conflict, one might end up cheering for different sides. For instance, in Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth plays, Joan of Arc is portrayed as a witch. In Shaw's Saint Joan, she is an ordinary but obstinate girl who becomes sainted. In Measure for Measure we are led to believe the Duke is the morally central character simply because of the way his character is drawn and the play is constructed around him, but after examining our own beliefs, we might find a discrepancy between the play's world view and our own.
Although this play creates an environment in which errant sexuality is seen as a sin that needs either punishment or forgiveness, another work might create quite totally opposite assumptions--as suggested by this passage from the 1953 novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis:
. . . he who can sleep with a woman and does not, commits a great sin. My boy, if a woman calls you to share her bed and you don't go, your soul will be destroyed! That woman will sigh before God on judgment day, and that woman's sigh, whoever you may be and whatever your fine deeds, will cast you into Hell!
That's about as diametrically opposed to what we think of as the customary intersection of morality and theology as one could imagine.
Artistically, Shakespeare speaks very little about damnation. His one excursion into the afterlife in this play is very existential, not at all as doctrinally based as the representation of the damnation of Faustus in Marlowe's famous play--a play in which one of the two major characters is a devil.
While Shakespeare and his contemporaries might represent the devil onstage, they were forbidden by law from even mentioning the name of God on stage. "Profanity" is technically the use of something holy in a worldly setting--the vain use of God's name, for instance. You may be familiar with the concept even today, where the name of the deity is printed without vowels as "G-d" to avoid, technically, profanity. We can even see the process by which earlier plays by Shakespeare were cleaned up or even censored for performance or publication.
Vulgarity is often confused with profanity, but there is no sense that words so-labeled were ever considered holy--at least not by the average speaker of English. In a play about sex, one might expect some fairly vulgar language. At least in Shakespeare's day, this language had already been eliminated from printed plays and (as far as we know) from public performance. And yet these Anglo-Saxon words had to be around, since they date form before the Norman Conquest. Shakespeare and his contemporaries instead were masters of euphemism, which have the artistic effect of heightening the imaginative picture while avoiding language that might be considered too vulgar (or even illegal) on the stage. The ideas thus expressed might still get one in trouble for "blasphemy" (showing contempt for God), and we still use the word "irreverent" as a label for sexual humor, even though the word strictly belongs to discussions of religion.
Thus Shakespeare couldn't use the "F-word"," but he does have Pompey speak of "Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river," and can use the word "fornication." The paragraph you're reading right now, of course, is subject to exactly the same restraints--even though the difference in "vulgarity" has no etymological basis. Not many modern speakers are educated to the use of Latinate words, and we are more likely to use the word "sex" to indicate the act, as in "sex in the Hall" or "I never had sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky"--a meaning Shakespeare never used. Like Shakespeare's trout, our euphemism is somewhat slippery--which act do we specifically mean when we use the word?
Shakespeare also had to manipulate the authorities of his day in still another way. A play about current events and people is called "topical," and Shakespeare's references to tearing down the brothels in the suburbs form a topical reference to what was happening in London. Of course, those who argued for tearing down the brothels also argued for tearing down the theatres in those same suburbs: Shakespeare avoided directly attacking Puritan elements in the English government by setting his play in Vienna--a nice bit of artistic two-step that lets Shakespeare distance himself from London, but, by using the Italian name for the city of Wien, retain the steamy sensuality of Italian culture as it was viewed by the English.
If we ever stopped to think about it (and part of the art of the play is that we don't) we might wonder why all the upper class Viennese have Italian names and all the lower class characters have English names--and of course they all speak English without any hint of any foreign language. (When Shakespeare did want to emphasize foreigness, he did so through outrageous Monty-Pythonesque stage accents, as in Henry the Fifth or Merry Wives of Windsor.) Shakespeare is, after all, writes about universal experience but with characters who are mainly represented as English.
To find out more about all aspects of Shakespeare, a good place to start
is Charles Boyce's Shakespeare A to Z (New York: Facts on File, 1990).
Naval Academy Shakespeare expert David White was the editorial consultant
for this encyclopedic treatment of the greatest figure in English literature.
To explore Shakespeare's general and specific sources of leadership, look
up the entries on Geoffrey Bullough, Edward Hall, A Mirror for Magistrates,
and Plutarch. For specific military and political examples outside
the great tragedies, see the article on History Plays and--of course--the
individual plays themselves.
To find out what the most important literary critics in history have said
about the play, consult the Variorum Shakespeare, edited by Horace Howard
Furness, or A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Measure for Measure
(1980) edited by Mark Eccles.
A quick way to find specific passages is to use a published concordance,
e.g. Marvin Spevack, The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1973), or just search on-line for "Shakespeare
Concordance."
Courtesy of Shenandoah Shakespeare Express: