Problem Play
Nov. 30th, 2005 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneThis livejournal is a place for me to think out loud. Or rather, not out loud. Because things get spinning around in my head and I absolutely cannot concentrate on anything else. That last entry was bouncing around me head for a good two and half days (ever since I saw the play, that is). That being said, the same disclaimer applies as did to the last entry:
Some things have been bothering me about Measure for Measure.
I. What is the point? By the end of the play, NOTHING has changed. The same laws that the duke was so anxious to have enforced have been pretty much thrown out all over again. And there doesn't seem likely to be any lasting consequence for anyone:
She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.
Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:
I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:
There's more behind that is more gratulate.
Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:
We shill employ thee in a worthier place.
Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself.
Talk about flip-flopping!
For first, in the very beginning, we had
Angelo:--
In our remove be thou at full ourself;
Mortality and mercy in Vienna
Live in thy tongue and heart
and
Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do
With any scruple; your scope is as mine own
So to enforce or qualify the laws
As to your soul seems good.
But then, in that final climactic scene:
DUKE VINCENTIO
I have bethought me of another fault.
Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded
At an unusual hour?
PROVOST
It was commanded so.
DUKE VINCENTIO
Had you a special warrant for the deed?
PROVOST
No, my good lord; it was by private message.
DUKE VINCENTIO
For which I do discharge you of your office:
Give up your keys.
Very well, except that he originally authorized Angelo with all of his own power. So if it wasn't right for Angelo to summarily order Claudio executed, can it be right for the duke to order
We do condemn thee to the very block
Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste.
Away with him!?
But here, in this last speech, the Duke asks:
Forgive, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself.
But even if it "pardons itself" the fact that he makes a request of it implies somehow that there is a fault, that the provost should have obeyed. Which ties back the original idea.
And once again we have this urging of Mariana's virtue on Angelo. As if he actually might have some sort of good reason for questioning it. But what reason can he possibly have. The play has made clear that the break was over the dowery, and the 'levity' thing was just an excuse. Mariana is so ridiculously virtuous that she still wants to marry the man who dumped her and impugned her reputation, for crying out loud! The one who wants to marry the man who would only look at her because he thought she was someone else!
Yes, I do think that Angelo is basically okay, but even so… she had better give him a talking to once they get back to the Moated Grange and all!
II. How can Isabella possibly accept the duke?
a) She's known him what? Three days? Tops? And most of those three days she knew him as a priest while she still pursued her convent vocation. In other words, neither was in a position to do anything romantic whatsoever.
b) He's lied to her how many times? Never mind his identity for a moment. First he tells her that her brother has been killed -- putting her through I don't know what kind of trauma -- when he hasn't been. Then he tells her to make her case to the duke, who will give her justice, but, when he appears in that guise, he pretends to disbelieve her, basically putting her into a position of public shame (granted, she doesn't know that it's the same person, but by the time he proposes, she must have figured it out). Then, when reveals his dual identity, he confirms the lie about her brother, only to bring him out at the last minute: just kidding!
So she's faced with this person she absolutely can't trust, who is sometimes for her, sometimes against her, always saying that he's acting in her interests, but practically speaking, all over the place, and for what? To teach his deputy a lesson? Because that's what the whole play seems to amount to, almost. And then he expects her to marry him?
Maybe she feels obligated: he's saved her brother's life and her honor. Maybe she's afraid: who knows what he'll do next if she crosses him. But in either case, isn't the result basically the same as it would have been had she accepted Angelo's original proposition? She gives sex and the guy protects her brother?
Okay, okay, I know that it's quite possible that she's fallen in love with him, or that she realizes that being a duchess is potentially better than being a nun. Or because she wants to make Angelo's life hell by always being at court and always ranking above him, with the unspoken idea that she could take revenge at any moment. But a soliloquy to that effect (that she has fallen in love with the friar/duke) would have been nice. Really. It would be a nice counterpoint to Angelo's anguished ones. Here she is, a nun, in love with a priest, and they're all muddled up in several someone elses' illicit loves to begin with. I mean come on, Shakespeare, what were you thinking leaving that out?!
So, Merchant of Venice came up on Sheroes today, and we were talking about the unfairness of Portia in espousing "the quality of mercy" and then declining to show any to Shylock.
I was going to say that at least Isabel, who makes a similar argument:
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
AND
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.
(Compare to:'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings
AND
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.)
That Isabel, at least, comes full circle and actually acts on her own exhortation, when she has her adversary in a bad position.
BUT, she doesn't. She pleads for clemency, yes, but how!:
Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
As if my brother lived: I partly think
A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
Till he did look on me: since it is so,
Let him not die. 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 perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects;
Intents but merely thoughts.
She argues in legalisms: Angelo didn't technically do anything wrong, so he shouldn't die. She's still so rigid that she can see her brother's death as justice. And it's true: technically speaking, all Angelo does by the end of the play is sleep with his pre-contracted fiancée. (Now, it seems that this is what Claudio and Juliet did, too -- right down to the marriage never being finalized over dowery issues.) So mercy is completely voided out, really.) If only Angelo hadn't slipped himself, it would have been perfectly okay for him to execute Claudio? That seems to be what Isabel is saying. That seems to be what the Duke is saying when he proclaims that, "he who the sword of heaven would bear/ should be as holy as severe." Does this mean that we're only obligated to be as moral as the best of our officials? (So it's perfectly fine for me to steal, cheat, lie, and murder, then, because the entire government is doing the same?)
That's why the duke can't enforce the law in the beginning, I suppose, because he just isn't pure enough. But Angelo is tested, too, and found wanting. Strict justice sort of devolves into mercy by default. That's weird. More on it later, perhaps.
Some things have been bothering me about Measure for Measure.
I. What is the point? By the end of the play, NOTHING has changed. The same laws that the duke was so anxious to have enforced have been pretty much thrown out all over again. And there doesn't seem likely to be any lasting consequence for anyone:
She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore.
Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo:
I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
Thanks, good friend Escalus, for thy much goodness:
There's more behind that is more gratulate.
Thanks, provost, for thy care and secrecy:
We shill employ thee in a worthier place.
Forgive him, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself.
Talk about flip-flopping!
For first, in the very beginning, we had
Angelo:--
In our remove be thou at full ourself;
Mortality and mercy in Vienna
Live in thy tongue and heart
and
Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do
With any scruple; your scope is as mine own
So to enforce or qualify the laws
As to your soul seems good.
But then, in that final climactic scene:
DUKE VINCENTIO
I have bethought me of another fault.
Provost, how came it Claudio was beheaded
At an unusual hour?
PROVOST
It was commanded so.
DUKE VINCENTIO
Had you a special warrant for the deed?
PROVOST
No, my good lord; it was by private message.
DUKE VINCENTIO
For which I do discharge you of your office:
Give up your keys.
Very well, except that he originally authorized Angelo with all of his own power. So if it wasn't right for Angelo to summarily order Claudio executed, can it be right for the duke to order
We do condemn thee to the very block
Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste.
Away with him!?
But here, in this last speech, the Duke asks:
Forgive, Angelo, that brought you home
The head of Ragozine for Claudio's:
The offence pardons itself.
But even if it "pardons itself" the fact that he makes a request of it implies somehow that there is a fault, that the provost should have obeyed. Which ties back the original idea.
And once again we have this urging of Mariana's virtue on Angelo. As if he actually might have some sort of good reason for questioning it. But what reason can he possibly have. The play has made clear that the break was over the dowery, and the 'levity' thing was just an excuse. Mariana is so ridiculously virtuous that she still wants to marry the man who dumped her and impugned her reputation, for crying out loud! The one who wants to marry the man who would only look at her because he thought she was someone else!
Yes, I do think that Angelo is basically okay, but even so… she had better give him a talking to once they get back to the Moated Grange and all!
II. How can Isabella possibly accept the duke?
a) She's known him what? Three days? Tops? And most of those three days she knew him as a priest while she still pursued her convent vocation. In other words, neither was in a position to do anything romantic whatsoever.
b) He's lied to her how many times? Never mind his identity for a moment. First he tells her that her brother has been killed -- putting her through I don't know what kind of trauma -- when he hasn't been. Then he tells her to make her case to the duke, who will give her justice, but, when he appears in that guise, he pretends to disbelieve her, basically putting her into a position of public shame (granted, she doesn't know that it's the same person, but by the time he proposes, she must have figured it out). Then, when reveals his dual identity, he confirms the lie about her brother, only to bring him out at the last minute: just kidding!
So she's faced with this person she absolutely can't trust, who is sometimes for her, sometimes against her, always saying that he's acting in her interests, but practically speaking, all over the place, and for what? To teach his deputy a lesson? Because that's what the whole play seems to amount to, almost. And then he expects her to marry him?
Maybe she feels obligated: he's saved her brother's life and her honor. Maybe she's afraid: who knows what he'll do next if she crosses him. But in either case, isn't the result basically the same as it would have been had she accepted Angelo's original proposition? She gives sex and the guy protects her brother?
Okay, okay, I know that it's quite possible that she's fallen in love with him, or that she realizes that being a duchess is potentially better than being a nun. Or because she wants to make Angelo's life hell by always being at court and always ranking above him, with the unspoken idea that she could take revenge at any moment. But a soliloquy to that effect (that she has fallen in love with the friar/duke) would have been nice. Really. It would be a nice counterpoint to Angelo's anguished ones. Here she is, a nun, in love with a priest, and they're all muddled up in several someone elses' illicit loves to begin with. I mean come on, Shakespeare, what were you thinking leaving that out?!
So, Merchant of Venice came up on Sheroes today, and we were talking about the unfairness of Portia in espousing "the quality of mercy" and then declining to show any to Shylock.
I was going to say that at least Isabel, who makes a similar argument:
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
AND
Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.
(Compare to:'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings
AND
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.)
That Isabel, at least, comes full circle and actually acts on her own exhortation, when she has her adversary in a bad position.
BUT, she doesn't. She pleads for clemency, yes, but how!:
Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
As if my brother lived: I partly think
A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
Till he did look on me: since it is so,
Let him not die. 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 perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects;
Intents but merely thoughts.
She argues in legalisms: Angelo didn't technically do anything wrong, so he shouldn't die. She's still so rigid that she can see her brother's death as justice. And it's true: technically speaking, all Angelo does by the end of the play is sleep with his pre-contracted fiancée. (Now, it seems that this is what Claudio and Juliet did, too -- right down to the marriage never being finalized over dowery issues.) So mercy is completely voided out, really.) If only Angelo hadn't slipped himself, it would have been perfectly okay for him to execute Claudio? That seems to be what Isabel is saying. That seems to be what the Duke is saying when he proclaims that, "he who the sword of heaven would bear/ should be as holy as severe." Does this mean that we're only obligated to be as moral as the best of our officials? (So it's perfectly fine for me to steal, cheat, lie, and murder, then, because the entire government is doing the same?)
That's why the duke can't enforce the law in the beginning, I suppose, because he just isn't pure enough. But Angelo is tested, too, and found wanting. Strict justice sort of devolves into mercy by default. That's weird. More on it later, perhaps.
