Do3: 29 April, Measure for Measure

[french frank]

If MoV is a "minor Shakespeare play", where do you place Measure for Measure (and why was Escalus played by a bloke called Maureen)?

That said (or asked), I thought this whizzed along in its zany kind of way. It's a pretty dark comedy which I wouldn't rate as highly as The Merchant.

[DracoM]

For me - and this production brought it out - Shakspeare's most trechant and despairing treament of the sheer, filthy, unbllushing machiavellian, on-the-make nastiness of ALL in any kind of power.

In this play, from The Duke, through Angelo - the Puritan - to the priests, the 'goodies' [who they?], the police, the prison guards there is pervasive, soiling moral ambivalence, end-justifying means-improvisation and avoiding issues that sickens.

The most honest - Mistress Overdone and Barnadine - are the lowest life, but at least are true to their priniples and professions and have no pretensions to anything grander.

Like FF, I was a bit puzzled as to why Escalus was a woman? And not being a Scot, it took me some time to work out the exact nuances that distinguished one or two actors from others. Aha, but maybe that was meant to be? i.e. is there anything to choose between the prevaricators and contrivers - one as good / bad as the other? so if you don;t quite know who is talking / contriving / improvising / devising traps for whom....does it matter? A plague on ALL their houses?

[gurnemanz]

I listened to about half an hour just to sample it. I came very late to M for M when we got tickets for the Young Vic staging a couple of years. To prepare the ground I watched the BBC Shakespeare version on DVD. It uses the complete text has and a great Isabella in Kate Nelligan and Tim Pigott-Smith as Angelo. I got a lot out of it and realised that it is definitely not a minor play and actually a riveting theatrical experience, both in terms of drama and poetry. This was confirmed by also watching Christopher Ricks' needle-sharp analysis on Youtube which was full of insights. The Young Vic production was a somewhat cut version and a bit OTT in places but was vastly enjoyable with Romola Garai as a remarkable Isabella. Coincidentally we saw her on Saturday at the Almeida, giving another very impressive and totally committed performance in the new play "The Writer".

[french frank]

the 'goodies' [who they?], the police, the prison guards there is pervasive, soiling moral ambivalence, end-justifying means-improvisation and avoiding issues that sickens.

I wouldn't judge Isabella or Mariana in that light.

not being a Scot, it took me some time to work out the exact nuances that distinguished one or two actors from others. Aha, but maybe that was meant to be? i.e. is there anything to choose between the prevaricators and contrivers - one as good / bad as the other?

Not knowing exactly who is speaking just seems an extension of the 'substitution' theme (though I expect to ears that are better attuned to the subtleties, they are all more easily distinguishable). But Mariana substitutes for Isabella, Barnadine('s head) substitutes for Claudio's, Friar Lodowick is really the Duke, Angelo 'substitutes' for the Duke in a different way, and a woman plays Escalus. All part of the mystification. How far do we really know people and what they are capable of?

[Conchis]

My reading of the play (the last time I read it) was that the Duke is an incompetent tyrant who wants to boost his own popularity by making Angelo responsbile for the tough decisions that he (the Duke) lacks the resolve to make. After his extremely dishonest behind the scenes tactics, he immediately re-establishes himself as a supreme autocrat, forcing Isabella to marry him and humiliating Angelo so that he can no longer be his rival for power. The treatment he metes out to Lucio is shocking.

I've only seen the play once (an OK RSC prodcution in the late 90s) and I've often wondered at critics who think W.S. (or whoever) lost his bottle at the end (or lost interest) and did a rush-job on the ending. It can work in performance, which is ultimately all that matters.

I'd say this is a more interesting play than M of V and possibly a better one (its clowns are less irksome than MofV's). I love the Duke's 'Be absolute for death...' speech.

[french frank]

My reading of the play (the last time I read it) was that the Duke is an incompetent tyrant who wants to boost his own popularity by making Angelo responsbile for the tough decisions that he (the Duke) lacks the resolve to make. After his extremely dishonest behind the scenes tactics, he immediately re-establishes himself as a supreme autocrat, forcing Isabella to marry him and humiliating Angelo so that he can no longer be his rival for power.

That would need an immediate rereading to establish agreement (and there are worse ways of spending an evening ).

The treatment he metes out to Lucio is shocking.

More shocking than the way way Angelo treats Claudio - and Mariana? Is his humiliation deserved?

I'd say this is a more interesting play than M of V and possibly a better one (its clowns are less irksome than MofV's). I love the Duke's 'Be absolute for death...' speech.

I'd agree that it's a very interesting play - certainly less familiar than MoV. A better one? I find it a bit too contrived for my taste. The Duke's motivation is less clear to me than to you.

[DracoM]

What for me makes it compulsive listening is that we see just how precarious the weilding of power is: a whole wobbly, fragile tissue of maybes / ifs / blackmails / possible and imopssibles.

And FGS are we not ourselves living in an age where we see that in every news broadcast. I'm listening to WATO as I write and hearing Clarke and Heseltine on both the new Home Sec, Brexit, and the likeiest manoeuvres and subterfuges of govt - sounds damned like the sleights of hand in MforM!!

By comparison, MoV is very straight and tough minded - if less likely - well, that final Belmont Act is..............

[Conchis]

That would need an immediate rereading to establish agreement (and there are worse ways of spending an evening ).

More shocking than the way way Angelo treats Claudio - and Mariana? Is his humiliation deserved?



I'd agree that it's a very interesting play - certainly less familiar than MoV. A better one? I find it a bit too contrived for my taste. The Duke's motivation is less clear to me than to you.

I once saw (the late) Michael Bogdanov give a very interesting masterclass on the play (I think it was in the goold old days of Channel 4), where he basically endorsed the reading I gave. I'd agree that the Duke's motivation is very unclear and he is certainly a 'problem' character for the reader/audience - at one moment he's a tyrant, the next he seems a genuinely compassionate man; then he's a tyrant again. Unless we're going to ascribe the changes to multiple authors with mutliple viewpoints, we have to believe that 'the author' intended him to confuse us - ie, a bad man can still do good things, just as Polonius - most of the time a silly old toady - can talk with great wisdom.

I would say that Angelo's actions toward Claudio and Isabella are harsh but in accordance with his own 'narrow morality' - his own plot-moving hypocrisy aside (and why must he express his love for Isabella - for that's what it seems to be - by raping her?), he has a set of standards which he sticks to. Isabella/Claudio is the only blot he's ever made on his immaculate copybook, we are led to believe.

The treatement of Lucio (he's the only character who actually dies, albeit offstage) has always seemed vicious to me - and it removes any doubts I'd had about the Duke. Although a 'libertine', he's also a good sort who tries to help out his friend (Claudio), so he's one of the more attractive characters in a play short on the same.

[Conchis]

Declain Donnellan (a director I don't generally admire) talks about the character of the Duke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX2Fn_PTuRE

[french frank]

Reading the start again, I think you're too hard on the Duke and too lenient on Angelo.

When the Duke is speaking to Friar Thomas (Act I sc. 3) he blames himself, implicitly, for the general laxity into which the people have fallen and seems, therefore, to consider it wrong that he should be the one to discipline them when he has been at fault ("Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope,/ ’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them/ For what I bid them do") . That's why he is handing the job over to Angelo. In fact, this seems to be the main reason for his withdrawal.

But I also think he is testing Angelo (he knows how he treated Mariana), since he says: "Hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be."

Angelo is the tyrant. He is over harsh (Claudio has said that Juliet was his 'wife' and they lacked only the 'denunciation' or public proclamation). He is a tyrant in attempting to blackmail an unwilling Isabella, and does what he had sentenced Claudio to death for. He then goes back on his word (as had already done with Mariana) by refusing to commute Claudio's death sentence. Cruel, hypocritical, immoral.

This is where the Duke steps in to ensure justice is done. Not sure what was wrong with his treatment of Lucio - didn't he just decree that he should marry the woman who was expecting his child?

This is the justice: Even unrependant Barnardine is spared ("A creature unprepared, unmeet for death, And to transport him in the mind he is Were damnable", says the Duke), since the recently dead prisoner Ragozine is the one who provides a convenient head to send to the deputy.

The Duke becomes the embodiment of justice.

[DracoM]

But what gets me is that ab initio, the Duke's reason for putting Angelo in charge is precisely to be the moralist chaser and executioner i.e he knows / nay hopes that Angelo will act exactly as he does to clear up the mess he, the Duke, createdd but now disapproves of - I mean, how morally evasive is that?

And then the Duke finds out who exactly he's put in the judge's place and knows he's made a nearly fatal error. And his later cosy marriage with Isabella for me just sickens the whole thing.

It's meant ot be a truly nasty work, knee deep in moral maggots and slime, and that's how it comes over IMO.

[Conchis]

But what gets me is that ab initio, the Duke's reason for putting Angelo in charge is precisely to be the moralist chaser and executioner i.e he knows / nay hopes that Angelo will act exactly as he does to clear up the mess he, the Duke, createdd but now disapproves of - I mean, how morally evasive is that?

And then the Duke finds out who exactly he's put in the judge's place and knows he's made a nearly fatal error. And his later cosy marriage with Isabella for me just sickens the whole thing.

It's meant ot be a truly nasty work, knee deep in moral maggots and slime, and that's how it comes over IMO.

There has long been a fashion to play the conclusions of this and several other Shakespeare plays as 'dark'ie, : at the end of Macbeth and at the end of Richard lll, one fascist succeeds another. 'Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss' as another bard (from Shepherds' Bush) once said.....

[french frank]

But what gets me is that ab initio, the Duke's reason for putting Angelo in charge is precisely to be the moralist chaser and executioner i.e he knows / nay hopes that Angelo will act exactly as he does to clear up the mess he, the Duke, createdd but now disapproves of - I mean, how morally evasive is that?

Hmm. Well, I read more into it than that. There is further evidence that - for some reason - he is testing Angelo. Another quote, the bit that comes just before the one I gave earlier. He suspects that Angelo is more 'human' than strict moralist:

More reasons for this action
At our more leisure shall I render you.
Only this one: 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. Hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

So there is more to it even than that (was gaining justice for Mariana part of it?).

And then the Duke finds out who exactly he's put in the judge's place and knows he's made a nearly fatal error.

Again, I disagree, since he plans to lurk in the guise of a friar and watch Angelo 'to behold his sway'.

And his later cosy marriage with Isabella for me just sickens the whole thing.

That I just don't understand. It's part of the symmetry of the ending: Claudio is to marry Juliet, Angelo Mariana, Lucio his 'punk', the wretched Barnardine is pardoned ("Thou ’rt condemned./But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all,/ And pray thee take this mercy to provide / For better times to come"). He then proposes to Isabella ("Give me your hand and say you will be mine"). There is no 'cosy marriage' since as has been pointed out, directors vary in whether she clearly accepts him or whether it remains unresolved. The closing words of the play seem to me quite unexceptionable:

"Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good,
Whereto if [sic] you’ll a willing ear incline,
What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.—
So, bring us to our palace, where we’ll show
What’s yet behind [that’s] meet you all should know."

As a novice, Isabel might well opt for her nunnery, if a director wanted her to.

[Conchis]

Hmm. Well, I read more into it than that. There is further evidence that - for some reason - he is testing Angelo. Another quote, the bit that comes just before the one I gave earlier. He suspects that Angelo is more 'human' than strict moralist:

More reasons for this action
At our more leisure shall I render you.
Only this one: 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. Hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

So there is more to it even than that (was gaining justice for Mariana part of it?).



Again, I disagree, since he plans to lurk in the guise of a friar and watch Angelo 'to behold his sway'.



That I just don't understand. It's part of the symmetry of the ending: Claudio is to marry Juliet, Angelo Mariana, Lucio his 'punk', the wretched Barnardine is pardoned ("Thou ’rt condemned./But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all,/ And pray thee take this mercy to provide / For better times to come"). He then proposes to Isabella ("Give me your hand and say you will be mine"). There is no 'cosy marriage' since as has been pointed out, directors vary in whether she clearly accepts him or whether it remains unresolved. The closing words of the play seem to me quite unexceptionable:

"Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good,
Whereto if [sic] you’ll a willing ear incline,
What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.—
So, bring us to our palace, where we’ll show
What’s yet behind [that’s] meet you all should know."

As a novice, Isabel might well opt for her nunnery, if a director wanted her to.

In the one production I saw, Isabella at first rejected the Duke, but havered; he then gave her a very sensual kiss, on which the lights dimmed and the play ended.

In period, of course, she would have had no choice but to accept the proposal of this firghteningly unpredictable supreme autocrat.

[french frank]

In period, of course, she would have had no choice but to accept the proposal of this firghteningly unpredictable supreme autocrat.

As I said, I don't read his character like that.