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Measure For Measure, Act 3, Dec 4
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Candy
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Nov 20, 2019 12:38PM
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John Doherty (johndoherty) | 36 comments
Isabella's lack of empathy and self-centred virtue is really quite unbelievable. To denounce a poor fellow facing death as:
"O, you beast,
O, faithless coward, O, dishonest wretch,
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother played my father fair...
For such a warped slip of wildness
Ne'er issued from his blood...Take my defiance,
Die, perish...Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed....
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee." (3.1)
Yet she was quite happy to agree to the disguised duke's plan
for Mariana to take her place in Angelo's bed. Anyone else's virtue can be sacrificed provided her's is left intact. She is prepared to
suggest her father was not her brother's father but some adulterous associate of her mother's. If she accepts the bumbling lack-brain duke's proposal of marriage, they will make a good pair.
Mod
Did you not see my last message about spoilers? Yor message #39 should go in the Act 3 discussion, due to begin on the 4th."
Well Martin, I get the message about spoiler which I take to mean someone bringing up some matter which belongs in a discussion of a scene not yet introduced. I take the view one cannot properly discuss a character without taking something of an allover view. To properly consider Isabella's character one must take the good with the bad. In the early scenes, she is upright and virtuous; so much so that one is inclined to exclaim, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." Later her virtue is shown to be totally self-centred, obsessive and without any element of compassion for less virtuous souls. No one demands she should yield to Angelo's lust to save Claudio, though it could be argued she could do so without sin but at the very least she could have shown Claudio a little compassion and spoken in a consoling tone rather than dragging her mother and father into her general condemnation.
These various aspects of Isabella's character really need to be considered together. John D.
I get the message about spoiler which I take to mean someone bringing up some matter which belongs in a discussion of a scene not yet introduced. I take the view one cannot properly discuss a character without taking something of an allover view..."John, spoilers are anything that has not yet happened in the Act we are reading. A few of us (like me!) have never read this play before, so it is more fun to NOT KNOW what happens and read it as it unfolds.
If we want to discuss the ENTIRE play, and character development, we have to put that in Act Five, when everyone knows everything that has happened.
Thanks!
Regarding the Duke's plan of replacing Isabel with Mariana -- I am wondering -- is Angelo supposed to be so stupid that he won't know the difference between the two women? DUKE
"Go you to Angelo; answer his
requiring with a plausible obedience; agree with
his demands to the point; only refer yourself to
this advantage, first, that your stay with him may
not be long; that the time may have all shadow and
silence in it; and the place answer to convenience.
This being granted in course,—and now follows
all,—we shall advise this wronged maid to stead up
your appointment,"
Even if this meeting is in "shadow and silence" Angelo should still know it is Mariana, considering he was engaged to her!
Well, I think he knows Isabella a lot less. When he saysthese black masks
Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder
Than beauty could, displayed,
I imagine him walking over to Isabella and touching a black hood that hides her face. Isabella used to be shown on stage resplendent in a virginal white, but the real poor Clares seem to have a more "sister act" style of dress:
https://www.stanncharlotte.org/wp-con...
I've so many thoughts now about the play, but I want to try and cut it down to what seems new to me with this read.I feel still that the play has no moral centre, and that this is deliberate, but I see Act 3 as structured to make this seem natural. It is dream-like. It begins indoors and ends outdoors. The literal minded 18th century editors split it into 2 scenes, with the Duke exiting, and then immediately entering with Elbow's appearance. But an exit followed by an immediate re-entrance in the next scene never happens in S. It is one continuous scene, with a shifting sense of place, in which the play's characters in turn encounter the Duke and exchange words with him. (And what is Lucio doing there?) A further sense of dislocation is the switch from verse to prose with the Duke's entrance. We barely notice the switch, yet it totally alters the mood of the play,
Duke: Vouchsafe a word, young sister, but one word. (still in verse)
Isabella: What is your will?
Duke (and now in prose, elegant, but very unpoetic): Might you dispense with your leisure, I would by and by have some speech with you: the satisfaction I would require is likewise your own benefit.
And then the "gnomic verses" with which the scene ends.
(It was claimed by Dover Wilson in his usual way that this shows evidence of an inferior hand at work, and he dismissed the gnomic verses as doggerel. My old Arden edition carried this idea on, and it affected my view of the play. But I learn that nobody accepts this now.)
The mood switch prepares the moral dislocation. Angelo is like Claudio: loved by a woman, but not married because of a problem with the dowry; Lucio is like Claudio: a child born out of wedlock; Overdone and Pompey are no longer active as bawds; the Duke and Isabella adopts their functions, pimping for Angelo and coming up with Mariana. Ms Overdone indeed seems a kindly woman, concerned about Claudio in Act 1, now caring for Lucio's abandoned offspring. Lucio, good friend to Claudio, now seems an irresponsible mischief maker.
S could have made the play straight comedy or straight tragedy. As comedy, Angelo might simply have been foiled and fled, like Don John in Much Ado. As tragedy, it would have turned out like Tosca, with Angelo, Isabella, Claudio acting out Scarpia, Tosca, Cavaradossi respectively. Instead we are taken off in a quite different direction.
Some Catholic questions for Christine (and anyone else of course):1) The Duke says "I am confessor to Angelo, and know this to be true." Quite false as usual, but I believe no priest would ever say this, as it breaks the confidentiality of confession. Would not Claudio usually suspect the Duke of imposture?
2) The Duke is a priest (takes confession) as well as being a friar. Apparently this is possible. Do you address him as "Father" or "Brother"? Elbow's "Bless you, good father friar" is not so foolish after all.
3) In Britain, impersonating a priest is actually a criminal offence. Is that true in the U.S.?
Martin wrote: "Some Catholic questions for Christine (and anyone else of course):1) The Duke says "I am confessor to Angelo, and know this to be true." Quite false as usual, but I believe no priest would ever s..."
Those are good questions! I'll try to answer.
!) YES! As a confessor, the Duke/ Friar is not supposed to reveal what anyone said to him in the confessional! Claudio might be suspicious -- or maybe there happen to be a lot of corrupt Friars around... Or, perhaps Claudio is so stressed out about his death sentence he is not thinking clearly.
2) A Friar is a special order of religious servant. All of them are called "Brothers" but some Friars become ordained priests as well. Then they can hear confession, perform sacraments, etc., and they are addressed as "Father". So, in this case, both Brother and Father are accurate titles.
3) YES! In the U.S. it is illegal to impersonate a priest (or a nun, rabbi, pastor, etc.). It is illegal to impersonate any member of a religious order.
Martin wrote: "The literal minded 18th century editors split it into 2 scenes, with the Duke exiting, and then immediately entering with Elbow's appearance. But an exit followed by an immediate re-entrance in the next scene never happens in S...."I noticed that too and thought it was strange. Have never seen that in S before.
Martin wrote: "I imagine him walking over to Isabella and touching a black hood that hides her face. Isabella used to be shown on stage resplendent in a virginal white, but the real poor Clares seem to have a more "sister act" style of dress..."Ah, but the Novice of the Poor Clares actually would be wearing white!
This post has some pictures of the Novice ceremony when she becomes a full fledged nun.
https://pcheartponderings.blogspot.co...
Christine wrote: Ah, but the Novice of the Poor Clares actually would be wearing white! ...I stand corrected, but how complicated it all is, with postulants and novices and sisters and nuns and abbesses and ... and ... it is not surprising I get confused.
And yet Angelo does seem to be indicating something more local in "these black masks" than the general idea of women's veils. I give up on that one.
Well, according to the translation from No Fear Shakespeare, regarding black masks:ORIGINAL TEXT
ANGELO
"Thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright
When it doth tax itself; as these black masks
Proclaim an enshield beauty ten times louder
Than beauty could, display’d."
MODERN TRANSLATION:
ANGELO
"This is how smart people try to seem really bright: by knocking their own intelligence. It’s the same way hiding behind a black mask makes a woman seem ten times more beautiful than her naked face does."
Angelo gets frustrated because he thinks Isabel is smarter than she lets on. I think the black mask could refer to anything -- like maybe a masque ball in which a woman would hide her face?
As far as I know, no nun's habit would have a black mask or anything to cover the entire face. According to Lord and Ladies.org, Medieval nuns wore:
"A nun's habit, tied around the waist with a cloth or leather belt.
Over the tunic was a scapula. A scapula was a garment consisting of a long wide piece of woolen cloth worn over the shoulders with an opening for the head. A wimple and veil was attached to the scapula. The front of the scapula was secured with a small piece of rectangular cloth that snapped the sides together. Hair shirts - some extreme nuns imposed suffering on themselves by wearing hair shirts under their habits.
Some nuns would also wear a cross upon a chain around their necks."
The wimple and veil would cover the neck and head, but nothing would cover the entire face.
Scholars have worked out that the "gnomic" verses with which the act ends fall into four stanzas of three couplets each, or 4 x 3 x 2 = 24 lines, except that stanza 3 has a couplet missing, as the linesHow may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
by themselves don't make proper sense. With the most extraordinary temerity I have composed a couplet, which, however bad and unshakespearean, gives I think the proper sense. Here we go:
1
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
2
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
3
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
Form matter for our minds unfit
And leave us with our little wit
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
4
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothèd but despisèd;
So disguise shall by the disguisèd
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.
The stanzas alternate. 2 and 4 are about the plot against Angelo, 1 and 3 are general statements. 2 and 4 are reasonably easy to understand while 1 and 3 are killers.
In 1 the Duke is saying that a magistrate should be no more severe than he is holy in himself, that his outer actions should follow the pattern of his own internal being, which exists by God's grace and acts by his own virtue. He should measure the punishments he gives by the faults he finds in himself.
"He/his" or "she/her" I need hardly add.
In 3 "likeness made in crimes" can mean (as I take it), crimes of the magistrate just like the ones he punishes, and also the "crime" of fornication, which can produce offspring with likeness to the parents. "Practise on the times" is "fraud against the times in which we live", this then leads to difficult mental conundrums, solving which is like pulling heavy weights with a spider's thread. (A spider looks idle when waiting at the centre of its web, or perhaps the thread is idle, having no purpose for man.)
Martin wrote: "Scholars have worked out that the "gnomic" verses with which the act ends fall into four stanzas of three couplets each, or 4 x 3 x 2 = 24 lines, except that stanza 3 has a couplet missing, as the ..."Interesting couplet, Martin! Well done!
I took the meaning slightly differently...
"To draw with idle spiders’ strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!" -- Angelo is using his tactic like a spider's web, to pull in more "substantial" things -- if he is left to continue on this way, no one will have a chance because he will keep convicting people.
The Duke then continues with his reasons to stop this and his plan to send Mariana to sleep with Angelo.
"Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;"
It also occurred to me that it could be divided as 5 stanzas, each consisting of two couplets and then with a single couplet at the end. (Shakespeare often ended acts with a single rhyming couplet.)
1
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
2
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
3
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
4
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders’ strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
5
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.
Hmmm, so then it is more like stanzas 1 and 2 are general commentary. Stanza 3 is directed at Angelo. Stanza 4 is general commentary. Stanza 5 and the ending couplet are directed at Angelo.
Just a thought, because the Shakespearean Sonnet has stanzas consisting of four lines (although a different rhyming pattern and iambic pentameter) with a rhyming couplet at the end.
But I think it's anyone's guess!
Hey that's pretty good! I was just following the modern Oxford edition commentary on the structure of the poem.The BBC version of the play I find changes
"Making practise on the times"
into
"Make a practise on the times"
introducing a main verb, and so creating a proper sentence. Perhaps that is all that was needed!
Mod
Here is where I am siting and reading the play. thought I'd share...
https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...
Mod
Martin wrote: "Hey that's pretty good! I was just following the modern Oxford edition commentary on the structure of the poem...."
I am sure the Oxford folks know better than me, haha! But I always think it is fun to play with and interpret the poetry.
How may likeness made in crimes,
Make a practise on the times,
So it sounds like the times they live in are pretty corrupt...
Mod
This Act really sets in to us as a tone (of corruption in the Kingdom, this is decay) and such sad situation. This Act nails in the death of a country and ethics.
I was not expecting this play to get so heavy.
I can see why this play is one of Harold Blooms (rest in peace dear Knight!) favourites. However...it is I suppose his favourite because its so complex?
The argument of whether having sex out of love, as a bargaining tool to save the life of someone...but not just anyone, her brother is really heavy. Its disturbing. In fact, I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier but we have Mistress Overone as a sex worker....and now Isabella has the option to be a sex worker in order to save her borother.
I took all of this rather lightly in the first two Acts. I know Martin said "wait the play gets better by Act 3" but I didn't see the gravity until it pulled on me so profoundly.
So we have a brother in the play...but then we find out the whole society is a brothel. Much like "Eyes Wide Shut" tries to warn us...with predictive programming!!! We were prepared by Kubrick for the news of Epstein, his cult of sexual addicts, or customers, or people who crave "strange" including the British royal family being caught as sexual abusers!
The timing of reading this play after the news stories of the last two years regarding sexual abuse within Hollywood extending to Epsteins millionaire clients is quite fascinating. If we had read this play a few years ago I don't know if Act 3 would have been so complex to me or not.
I think this is an incredible sequence of poetry, verse between Isabella and Cludio. cCaudio on life and death....this is remarkable and very clear:
CLAUDIO
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 bathe 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 pendent 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 a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Then switching to Isabella...
CLAUDIO
Sweet sister, let me live:
What sin you do to save a brother's life,
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.
ISABELLA
O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
CLAUDIO
Nay, hear me, Isabel.
ISABELLA
O, fie, fie, fie!
Thy sin's not accidental, but a trade.
Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd:
'Tis best thou diest quickly.
To read out loud some of Act 3, Scene 2 is stunning. It sneaks up and is really vibrant. It is to see how brilliant some of the verse is. It is spoken so easily and such a musical sound it becomes.
Mod
First in the mythology we have in Measure for Measure...the idea that a King elects an stand in King in order deflect any negative outcomes on to the "dummy or false king". This is also ancient where when there were eclipses, a leader, chief, King would put forth a substitute King. This fake king would govern during what was perceived as a bad time. Anything rotten or poor outcomes during the fearful time period would be blamed on the sunny or fake king...then that substitute would be killed/ sacrificed, and the old King could maintain their reputation and the kingdom would return to sanity.
This play seems to be a version of that sort of set up. Virgin sacrifice plays into this ancient substitute too. Beheading are part of the mythology.
So the "beheading" in this play has been that women's voices (power, vote, autonomy, agency) are not of value...they are "beheaded" in society.
Bt then to Hamlet...Isabella's anger, rightful anger, makes her somewhat insane...or too moralistic where she is to celebrate her brothers death. She has every right to be so angry at her brother...and that Shakespeare makes her tell her brother such feelings seems cruel. Yet...all of the society is cruel to women.
How can this level out? I was hanging on pins and needles to hear how this would be resolved, or possibly not resolved, by the next Acts....
In this way this play hovers like terrible tragedy of Hamlet. Yet Hamlet...through art and sacrifice the kingdom is returned to health....
I wanted to mention the sickness assoated with women. There is oe part when a woman is in a "tub" and that was for treating general disease...maybe I'll dig into that more later.
Candy, those lines you quote are so intense: why is this play less well loved than the others when the poetry is so great?S almost seems to know Dante here.
"To bathe in fiery floods" is traditional, but "to reside / in thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice", is one of Dante's most powerful images, when he and Virgil meet Ugolino and others locked in the frozen lake,
But Claudio continues his list with the punishment that might be applied to him.
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.
In Dante, those who give up everything for love eternally cling together and are buffeted in high wind. There is the sense that this is not a punishment. The lovers are together at last. Claudio and Juliet could join Paolo and Francesca.
Candy, glad to see you are still reading. The mythology idea is interesting. I borrowed the OUP edition of M4M from the library, and the intro traces the story back to a kind of urban myth common right across Europe, of a deputy who abuses his position Angelo-like and is then punished by the harshness of the laws he has established. It formed the basis of many popular stories.
The poetry of this play is great -- and if this play is "less loved" than the others I believe it is because of the subject matter. The subject matter is downright disturbing! Of course, all of Shakespeare is a bit disturbing, but this goes into the realm of things that most folks can't talk about.While Romeo and Juliet, as well as Hamlet, have made it into mainstream high school literature, M4M is a thing they'd probably never touch.
Candy, the comparison to 'Eyes Wide Shut' is really interesting! In our post Weinstein post Epstein world, I think this play needs some promotion.
Mod
"The Problem Plays in general, and Measure for Measure in particular, especially contrast with Shakespeare’s earlier, “romantic” comedies although one finds in it some of their features and patterns. But these motifs are treated in an ironical way and seen through a distorting mirror. The marriage bed to which couples withdraw at the end of romantic comedies here takes the shape of the morally puzzling bed-trick, and marriage itself, which is conventionally the emblem of fulfilment and embodies a promise of happiness and harmony, is garbed with negative connotations. One of the most blatant consequences of the distortion of romantic comedy motifs in Measure for Measure is the disempowerment of female characters. Indeed, at the end of the play, they are violently levelled out, at the lowest possible level: they all become like the street prostitute Kate Keepdown, that is to say women who are totally dependent on men and who exist above all through their sexual status.
2This article aims to demonstrate that Shakespeare uses traditional comic devices such as the bed-trick and the concluding marriages in a very unusual way, which participates in the generic ambiguity of Measure for Measure and in its confusion of female roles. In this perspective, the questions of genre and gender appear as tightly linked: the problematic genre of the play entails a heightened ambiguity of female roles. The borderlines between both generic and gender categories blur, and elements and roles which are traditionally kept apart overlap. After a brief presentation of the problems the genre of Measure for Measure poses, I will dwell on the use Shakespeare makes of the bed-trick and the concluding, supposedly happy marriages, to show that these reworkings lead, among other things, to the blurring of the categories of female characters."
https://journals.openedition.org/sill...
Candy wrote: "Did I share this?https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/1..."
Thanks Candy! I don't think you shared the article before, or at least I did not see it. This was one of the first comparisons I made. Fascinating stuff! Once again, the immortal Bard proves he is -- well -- immortal!
Very interesting articles, pop and academic, both by women.Ditto to Christine's remarks, in fact the pop article picks out some of the very things we noted in the read ("Who would believe thee Isabelle?" etc.)
Candy, you need to use a proper computer -- are you trying to do it all on a cellphone or something? Prepare a longish post on Windows notepad, then copy and paste it in.
