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Providential Improvisation in Measure for Measure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Louise Schleiner
Louise Schleiner*
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Abstract

Measure for Measure has inspired widely divergent readings, in our century having been seen as either doctrinal (embodying Christian teachings) or “dark” and satiric. The play's prominent biblical and theological allusions do evoke a parallel between the duke and God, as testing master, redeemer, and judge; the parallel, however, is comic, not didactic, showing that the duke is not God but a ruler who makes a quixotic attempt in his government to imitate God (as rulers theoretically were obliged to and as King James had claimed he would), with mixed and humorous results. The duke is fallible, meddling, and laughable but beneficent, inventive, and in large measure successful in helping his subjects.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 2 , March 1982 , pp. 227 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1982

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References

1 See, e.g., Lawrence W. Hyman, “The Unity of Measure for Measure,” Modern Language Quarterly, 36 (1975), 3–20. G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire, 4th ed. (London: Methuen, 1949), pp. 73–96. R. W. Chambers, Man's Unconquerable Mind (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), pp. 227–310. Roy W. Battenhouse, “Measure for Measure and the Christian Doctrine of the Atonement,” PMLA, 61 (1946), 1929–59.

Elizabeth M. Pope, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Survey, 2 (1949), 66–82. Nevill Coghill, “Comic Form in Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Survey, 8 (1955), 14–27. Clifford Leech, “The ‘Meaning’ of Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Survey, 3 (1950), 66–73. A. P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1961).

2 Anne Barton, Introd., Measure for Measure, in the Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton, 1974), p. 549. All quotations from the play are from this edition.

3 There have of course been moderate readings. J. W. Lever, for example, in his edition of the play for the New Arden Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1965) sees it as an experiment in tragicomedy, with both a dark and a doctrinal side. The duke is not God but at least an authority figure, and Shakespeare's art is “incarnational.” Josephine Bennett, Measure for Measure as Royal Entertainment (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1966), in following up Elizabeth Pope's point that the ruler traditionally stood for God in government, regards the duke as fallible yet thinks he “embodies the Divine mercy which watches over man” (p. 126).

4 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1950), pp. 118–38.

5 Mark Eccles informs me that the duke has been linked to these parables by John A. Heraud in Shakspere: His Inner Life as Intimated in His Works (London, 1865), pp. 280–81, and briefly by Sarah C. Velz, “Man's Need and God's Plan in Measure for Measure and Mark IV,” Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 44.

6 Rosalind Miles, in The Problem of ‘Measure for Measure‘ (London: Vision Press, 1976), p. 255, argues that the duke's motives for abdicating are insufficient and that this lack is somehow the source of all Shake-speare's problems with the plot. But the duke has the same motive as the testing master of the parables, and it is consistent with most of what he does: he wants to test people and their modes of conduct, as Miles herself elsewhere shows.

7 See esp. F. R. Leavis, “The Greatness of Measure for Measure” Scrutiny, 10 (1941–42), 234–47, and Mary Lascelles, Shakespeare's ‘Measure for Measure‘ (London: Athlone Press, 1953).

8 Biblical passages are cited from The Geneva Bible:A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition, ed. Lloyd Berry (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1969).

9 Darryl J. Gless, in “Measure for Measure and Reformation Christianity,” Diss. Princeton 1974, notes that Anglican exegesis of the play's title passage (Matt, vii.2) said its point was to condemn slander; thus Lucio is the particular butt of a major theme of the play. Gless likewise sees Anglican reasons for the duke's “providential ministrations” to his other subjects.

10 See esp. 2 Cor. v.17–19, 21: “Therefore if anie man be in Christ, let him be a new creature. Olde things are passed away: beholde, all things are become new. And all things are of God, which hathe reconciled vs vnto himself by Jesus Christ, and hathe giuen vnto vs the ministerie of reconciliation. For God was in Christ, and reconciled the worlde to himself, not imputing their sinnes vnto them, and hathe committed to vs the worde of reconciliation…. For he hathe made him to be sinne for vs, which knew no sinne, that we shulde be made the righteousnes of God in him.”

11 Howard C. Cole, “The ‘Christian’ Context of Measure for Measure,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 64 (1965), 425–51, also quotes this passage from Romans and notes that Claudio is accusing Angelo and by implication God of arbitrary condemnation. But I do not agree with the reading he goes on to construct.

12 Josephine Bennett, pp. 18–19, 157–58. Rosalind Miles, in reviewing criticism of the play, says that this aspect of Bennett's approach is “however unconsciously, eventually belittling,” that it tends to undermine the play she wants to rehabilitate (The Problem of ‘Measure for Measure,‘ p. 90).

13 Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 210–12.

14 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Pt. ii, 2, vi), ed. Floyd Dell and Paul Jordan-Smith (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1929), p. 769. Hardin Craig also cites this passage, in Complete Works of Shakespeare (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1951), p. 851.

15 Basilikon Doron; or, His Maiesties Instructions to His Dearest Sonne, Henry the Prince, in The Political Works of James I, ed. C. H. Mcllwain (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1918), pp. 3, 12. The second passage cites the teaching from Matthew on judging that supplied our play's title: “learne to know and loue that God, … first, for that he made you a man; and next, for that he made you a little God to sit on his Throne, and rule ouer other men. Remember, that as in dignitie hee hath erected you aboue others, so ought ye in thankfulnesse towards him, goe as farre beyond all others. A moate in anothers eye, is a beam into yours….”

16 (i Letter from John More to Sir Ralph Winwood, 24 March 1610, in James 1 by His Contemporaries, ed. Robert Ashton (London: Hutchinson, 1969), pp. 67–68.

17 See Ashton, and G. B. Harrison, A Jacobean Journal, 1603–1606 (London: Routledge, 1941), e.g., pp. 86–90. Many parallels between the duke and James i have been noted by Bennett, pp. 78–104, and earlier critics she cites.

18 Bennett, pp. 125–37. Her argument seems very useful, whether or not she is right that Shakespeare himself played the role of the duke.

19 See Norman Nathan, “The Marriage of Duke Vincentio and Isabella,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 7 (1956), 43–52; the similarity of their situation to that of the hero and heroine in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is mentioned by J. A. Lavin in “Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare in the New World, Stratford Papers, 1968–69, ed. B. A. W. Jackson (Shannon:Irish Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 107–09.