“The very nerves of state”: Biopolitics and Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s Vienna
p. 159-172
Texte intégral
1 Measure for Measure (1604) focuses upon the Viennese government’s drive for sexual propriety amongst its citizens with Duke Vincentio allowing his deputy, Angelo, to enact a number of draconian measures during his absence, most notably the execution of Claudio as an exemplary punishment for fornication. This play’s peculiar emphasis upon crime and punishment and its representations of political, legal, and religious institutions, and their roles in consolidating sovereign power, have provided the bases for many influential readings of Measure for Measure. These critical approaches have been informed by a theoretical framework influenced by the work of Michel Foucault, particularly Discipline and Punish (1975), in which he explores the ways in which the power of the state is manifested in such forms as the prison and public executions1. In Measure for Measure, therefore, such things as the prison, Claudio’s manacled body, the disembodied head of Ragozine, and the office of the public executioner (enforced upon Pompey as punishment) come to emblematise the power of the state over the individual. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the ways in which healthy, fertile bodies also represent the authority of the state by forming the body politic and the potential for a reading of the play informed by the development of biopolitical theories has not yet been fully realised. In this paper I aim to address this issue by exploring the ways in which Foucault’s later work on biopolitics, along with Giorgio Agamben’s related writings on the homo sacer and the sovereign exception, can illuminate aspects of the representation of sovereignty and the status of the individual in a biopolitical state, along with the wider contemporary discourses on these topics with which the play engages.
2Michel Foucault first articulated the concept of biopolitics in the mid-1970s, most notably in The Will to Knowledge (1976), the first volume of The History of Sexuality, in which he explored the ways in which power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is promulgated by discourses of sexuality; one of the ways in which this is manifested is in the development of biopolitics. Foucault argues that during the eighteenth century a number of fundamental changes were taking place to the ways in which sovereign power was exercised. Foucault characterises the traditional manifestation of power thus:
“The sovereign exercised his right of life only by exercising his right to kill, or by refraining from killing; he evidenced his power over life only through the death he was capable of requiring. The right which was formulated as the ‘power of life and death’ was in reality the right to take life or let live. Its symbol, after all, was the sword… Power in this instance was essentially a right of seizure: of things, time, bodies, and ultimately life itself; it culminated in the privilege to seize hold of life in order to suppress it2.”
Foucault goes on to contrast this form of power with a distinctly modern form of political manoeuvring. Rather than enforcing power through death, or the threat of death, and the right of seizure, political power had, over the course of the last few centuries, “assigned itself the task of administering life3”. The previous methods of exercising power through the sword had been abandoned and “the ancient right to take life or let live” had been replaced by the power to “foster life or disallow it to the point of death4”. Sovereign power thus operated by investing itself in the control of the basic biological conditions of life and the administration of individual bodies, focusing
“on the species body, the body imbued with the mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series of interventions and regulatory controls: a biopolitics of the population. The disciplines of the body and the regulations of the populations constituted the two poles around which the organization of power over life was deployed5”.
For Foucault, then, the turn towards biopolitical methods of power enforcement constitutes a distinct break from the sovereign’s power of death and represents the “threshold of modernity6”.
3The fact that Foucault sees the eighteenth century as the turning point for these developments means that the application of these theories to early modern literature and culture is problematic. Richard Wilson addresses this problem by suggesting that “critics have recognized an elective affinity between the pre-modern playwright and this postmodern philosopher of penumbral prisons, pain and power7”. Wilson goes on to establish the relevance of Foucault’s theories for scholars of the early modern period:
“Renaissance writers such as Shakespeare were crucial to Foucault because their works register the threshold of modernity, he maintained, when the ‘cortège’ of the mad, sick, unemployed, deviant or delinquent was marched under the gaze of law and science into the institutions of the nation-state, such as the workhouse and asylum8.”
4Foucault’s conception of biopolitics as a distinctly modern phenomenon has also been challenged by the political works of Giorgio Agamben, particularly Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995), in which he traces the entrance of life into the political sphere from the birth of ancient democracy and sees it surfacing at key points in the development of modern democratic government. For Agamben, the “originary activity of sovereignty” is the production of “bare life,” a form of life which is dehumanised by the very political processes from which it has been qualified and subsequently excluded9. Bare life, as represented by the docile bodies of the citizens forming the body politic, thus comes to emblematise the effects of sovereign power. Agamben argues that an enduring paradigm for an individual under a political system is the homo sacer, an obscure figure from Roman law who could be killed but not sacrificed, making him simultaneously included and excluded from society’s laws. Another characteristic product of the enduring resonance of biopolitics has been the development of the sovereign exception, based upon the paradox that the sovereign is, “at the same time, outside and inside the juridical order” meaning that “the sovereign, having the legal power to suspend the validity of law, legally places himself outside the law. This means that the paradox can also be formulated in this way: “the law is outside itself,” or “I, the sovereign, who am outside the law, declare that there is nothing outside the law10.” In this way, the figures of the sovereign and the homo sacer are defined by their “inclusive exclusion” in relation to the operation of political power, making them both products of the entrance of life into political processes. In this reading of Measure for Measure, I aim to appropriate Foucault and Agamben’s conceptions of biopolitics in order to illuminate the ways in which power is exercised in Shakespeare’s Vienna.
5The government of Vienna, as represented in Shakespeare’s play, has the explicitly stated intention of exercising its control over the bodily impulses of its subjects and regulating their actions. According to Vincentio, his laxity in regulating the sexual propriety of his subjects has resulted in a serious breach of social decorum:
We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong jades,
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip;
Even like an o’er-grown lion in a cave
That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children’s sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock’d than fear’d: so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks Justice by the nose,
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum11.
Even though the Duke seems to be admitting his responsibility for this state of affairs – a point reinforced by his later remark that “’twas my fault to give the people scope” (1.3.35) – Vincentio’s analysis still implicitly exemplifies the tendency observed by Jonathan Dollimore for corruption to be “downwardly identified” and “displaced from authority to desire and by implication from the rulers to the ruled12”. Claudio, the victim of the new draconian measures designed to curb sexual licence, advances a similar point of view to that of the Duke in the previous scene when he explains that his current confinement has resulted
From too much liberty… Liberty,
As surfeit, is the father of much fast;
So every scope by the immoderate use
Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,
A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die (1.2.117-122).
Claudio thus implicitly endorses the Duke’s outlook and both parties acknowledge the inherent tendency of the people towards excessive behaviour, suggesting they must be subject to increased restraint. However, Elizabeth Hanson argues that this speech is riddled with ambiguity, suggesting “that the natural transgression and the subsequent juridical restraint are logically two distinct events, that the force which drives the rat to his death is not the same as the appetite which led him to the bane in the first place,” thus introducing “an undecidability with respect to the status of the law which is being brought to bear on Claudio at this moment13”. The straightforward trajectory of action and consequence, crime and punishment, is therefore complicated in this speech, thus highlighting the difficulty the state faces in regulating the bodily impulses of the populace and implying there is a more nebulous rationale behind their endeavour to do so.
6The play also confronts the fact that attempting to control the formerly unrestrained sexuality of the populace is fundamentally problematic for a society whose goal, when following a biopolitical trajectory, is the production of a healthy and reproducible social body. As Pompey implies, it would be necessary to “geld and splay all the youth of the city” (2.1.227-228) to ensure a sexually decorous society, suggesting a considerable degree of tension between this drive for sexual propriety and the necessity to facilitate the propagation of life. Richard Wilson shows that the imperatives relating to the need to foster life can be related to seventeenth century England and argues that it is no accident
“that Shakespeare’s comedies should be so preoccupied with courtship, marriage and reproduction, since what necessitated this ‘governmentalization’ was the discovery of the importance of population. Thus, heterosexual desire came to be prioritized in Shakespeare’s lifetime as a function of demographics, for it was only around 1600, when European societies broke free of the gridlock of famine, that the imperative of rulers ceased to minimize the numbers of their subjects. Henceforth the power of a state would be no more measured by the extent of its territory, but by the size of its army, and so, by its birth rate14”.
Wilson therefore traces the imperative of a society to foster life back to the early modern period, making the government of England, and of Shakespeare’s Vienna, characteristically biopolitical.
7In a biopolitical state, therefore, the healthy, fertile bodies of the citizens become emblems of sovereign power. It is therefore fitting that one of the recurring motifs of Measure for Measure is the image of the pregnant woman, as represented through the physical stage presence of Juliet, and in the references to the pregnant bodies of Elbow’s wife and Kate Keepdown. However, the problem the government faces is that, aside from Elbow’s wife, the women’s pregnancies have resulted from actions which have taken place outside of state control, thus representing a challenge to the state’s monopoly over the control of the conditions governing the reproduction of life. The impregnation of Juliet has taken place outside of the confines of an officially recognised marriage and thus represents the production of life outside of government control. The pregnancy of Kate Keepdown, which is the result of her work as a prostitute, also subverts the government’s attempts to control the conditions determining the production of life. It is a commonplace to note that in Hamlet (1600-1601), the prince’s famous command to Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery15,” plays upon the multiple meanings of the term “nunnery,” connoting as it does both the religious institution and the brothel. The two institutions are similarly equated in Measure for Measure with both of them functioning as microcosmic biopolitical spaces which challenge the state’s attempts to monopolise control over the bodily impulses of its subjects. Both institutions, as we shall see, have their own sets of rules governing the actions of their inmates’bodies which, either overtly or implicitly, challenge the regulations dictated by the state. The induction of Isabella into the nunnery reveals the rules laid down by the order of St Clare in order to regulate the actions of the nuns:
Isabella. – And have you nuns no father privileges?
Nun. – Are not these large enough?
Isabella. – Yes, truly; I speak not as desiring more,
But rather wishing a more strict restraint
Upon the sisters stood, the votarists of Saint Clare (1.4.1-5).
It is therefore implied that the sisters within the nunnery are forced to comply with a strict set of rules which are further elaborated by the nun when Lucio calls at the door:
It is a man’s voice! Gentle Isabella,
Turn you the key, and know his business of him;
You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn:
When you have vow’d, you must not speak with men
But in the presence of the prioress;
Then, if you speak, you must not show your face;
Or if you show your face, you must not speak (1.4.7-13).
The rules governing the sisterhood of St Clare have therefore been put in place to prevent any interaction of a sexual nature between the sisters and any male visitors. The potential for the sisters to be viewed erotically is revealed not only by Angelo’s sexual obsession with Isabella, but also in Lucio’s first encounter with her, in which he addresses her as a “virgin, if you be–as those cheek-roses/Proclaim you are no less” (1.4.16-17). In this way, Lucio characterises her in terms of her sexual status. The nunnery is therefore shown as having its own set of rules governing the impulses and the sexual availability of those who reside in it; it thus emerges as an institution which is antithetical to the imperatives of a government looking to assert control over the bodies of its subjects with the aim of fostering a reproducible social body. Indeed, Laura Lunger Knoppers has argued that the chaste Isabella represents a potentially subversive presence in this society16.
8The brothel emerges as a similar, yet more explicitly subversive, challenge to the government’s attempts to impose order upon the bodily impulses of its subjects. In the play’s second scene, the audience is introduced to Mistress Overdone’s brothel and its clientele. Lucio first refers to Mistress Overdone as “Madam Mitigation” (1.2.41), alluding to the fact that she and her business mitigate the desires and impulses of her customers. Lucio goes on to state that he has purchased “many diseases under her roof” (1.2.42), thus characterising the bawdy house and its employees as being riddled with pestilence. In this way he implies that the institution is a threat to the government’s implicit aim of fostering healthy citizens to maintain the body politic. Lucio also goes on to goad one of the other gentlemen present by implying that he has become infected with the diseases harboured by the prostitutes by asserting that “thy bones are hollow; impiety has made a feast of thee” (1.2.52-53). Such assumptions are also prominent in Timon of Athens (1607), particularly at the core of Timon’s tirade against the prostitutes who will, he hopes, become agents of the apocalyptic vengeance he wishes to see exacted upon Athens by spreading diseases amongst the Athenian nobility:
Consumptions sow
In hollow bones of man, strike their sharp shins
And mar men’s spurring. Crack the lawyer’s voice
That he may never more false title plead
Nor sound his quillets shrilly. Hoar the flamen
That scolds against the quality of flesh
And not believes himself. Down with the nose,
Down with it flat, take the bridge quite away
Of him that, his particular to forsee,
Smells from the general weal. Make curled-pate ruffians bald
And let the unscarred braggarts of the war
Derive some pain from you. Plague all,
That your activity may defeat and quell
The source of all erection17.
Timon’s speech reveals many of the perceived dangers posed by prostitution to the health and fertility of the social body; his references to the decaying of the bones, the loss of hair, and the loss of the nose, all allude to the onset of syphilis and other venereal diseases. The government’s enforced closure of the brothels in Measure for Measure can therefore be seen to be rooted in biopolitical imperatives as a means of achieving a healthy and reproducible social body.
9An example of some of the contemporary impressions of prostitution can be ascertained from Thomas Dekker’s Lantern and Candlelight (1608), in which the narrator is guided around London by the Bellman, a night-watchman who points out the various vices being committed in the city. In a chapter entitled “The Infection of the Suburbs,” some views are advanced on the subject of prostitution:
“How happy therefore were cities if they had no suburbs, since they serve but as caves, where monsters are bred up to devour the cities themselves! Would the devil hire a villain to spill blood, there he shall find him; one to blaspheme, there he hath choice; a pander that would court a matron at her prayers, he’s there; a cheater that would turn his father a begging, he’s there; a harlot that would murder her new-born child, she lies in there!
What a wretched womb hath a strumpet, which being for the most barren of children, is notwithstanding the only bed that breeds up these serpents! Upon that stalk grow all these mischiefs. She is the cockatrice that hatcheth all these eggs of evil18.”
10According to Dekker, the prostitute represents transgression on a number of levels. He asserts that, for the most part, such a woman is infertile, yet he also sees the prostitute’s womb as the source of many of the social vices represented in his text. He also presents the image of the prostitute murdering her own new-born children. From a biopolitical point of view, all these features would represent a considerable threat to the fostering of a healthy, docile, and reproducible social body. In Dekker’s view, when the suburban prostitute is not eradicating new life, she is either incapable of reproduction or is introducing undesirable elements with the potential to exacerbate the problems with urban vice into the social body. It is also particularly significant that Dekker identifies the suburbs as the principal source for these problems, especially as, according to Pompey, it is only the brothels situated in the suburbs which are set to demolished, while the brothels in the city will be allowed to “stand for seed” (1.2.91). The closure of the brothels can thus be regarded as a proactive effort to facilitate a biopolitical society. The potential sexual and reproductive energies of the clients of such establishments are being wasted when they could be channelled into the formation of a social body to strengthen the state. As matters stand, such energies are either being expended unproductively in the brothels or being made to remain idle in the penal and punitive institutions, as suggested by Pompey when he first enters the prison and observes, “I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profession: one would think it were Mistress Overdone’s own house, for here be many of her customers” (4.3.1-4). The brothel and the practice of prostitution therefore represent a threat to the establishment of a biopolitical regime in the Vienna of Measure for Measure.
11It is notable that at the conclusion of Measure for Measure every attempt is made to appropriate and redeploy these oppositional energies within the established institutional frameworks of the government. Vincentio fulfils the traditional comedic role of an agent of social harmony by ordering the nuptials of the various couples at the end of the play. He orders Claudio to “restore” the virtue of Juliet by marrying her (5.1.522), he demands that Lucio be married to Kate Keepdown as punishment for his slanderous remarks and for perjuring himself by asserting he was not the father of her child, and he oversees the marriage of Angelo and Mariana. He also attempts to re-establish the government’s monopoly over control of his subjects’bodies by taking Isabella as his bride, thus undermining the independence of the nunnery and its attempts to exert its own set of rules over the bodies of its inhabitants. Such efforts to incorporate these subversive elements into the framework of the state are echoed in the situation of Pompey who is given the alternative of being recruited as a state executioner or serving “your full time of imprisonment and your deliverance with an unpitied whipping” (4.2.10-12) as punishment for his association with the brothel.
12It is clear that Vincentio aims not just for the eradication of the bawdy houses, but also for the establishment of an official line on marriage, thus bringing it under state control. In his defence against the charges of fornication, Claudio claims that “upon a true contract/I got possession of Julietta’s bed” (1.2.134-135) and that “she is fast my wife,/Save that we do the denunciation lack/Of outward order” (1.2.136-138). These lines have generated much debate over the nature of the “true contract” into which Claudio and Juliet have entered and whether it can be considered to be a contract per verba futuro (a marriage to be officially recognised in the future) or a per verba de praeseti agreement (an agreement which makes the couple effectively married at that moment19). There was considerable uncertainty in early modern England over the issue of when a marriage could be officially recognised, an issue which was a source of tension between Church law and English common law. Leah Marcus observes that, as a result, “the line between illegal sexual incontinence and true marriage was very flexible in practice20”. Marcus goes on to point out that the question of who enforced and regulated laws regarding marriage had become particularly resonant by 1604 when Shakespeare was most probably writing Measure for Measure:
“What constituted ‘true’ marriage was a more nebulous matter in the London of 1604 than it had been for decades because of new and competing initiatives on the part of Crown, church, Nonconformist divines, and agents of the city government to impose consistency upon an area of human conduct which had traditionally been subject only to sporadic regulation. In Measure for Measure, as in London of 1604, the question of whose authority will dominate in an area of uncertainty and conflicting jurisdiction is a question which is at least as important – probably more important – than the actual punishments meted out for incontinence21.”
13Duke Vincentio’s appropriation of marriage as a disciplinary measure can therefore be interpreted as a means for him to impose limits upon the actions of certain subjects’bodies and to make it easier to incorporate their progeny into the body politic. The move also allows Vincentio to consolidate his power by centralising the formerly nebulous and delegated sources of authority concerning this issue and imposing more rigid control over the uncertain and flexible status of couples with various marriage contracts, such as Claudio and Juliet and Angelo and Mariana. It is notable that Vincentio unequivocally tells Claudio that he has “wrong’d” (5.1.522) Juliet by having sex with her outside of wedlock, revealing that he favours a clearer and less ambiguous outlook towards matrimonial statuses22.
14Vincentio therefore opts for a policy of rehabilitation rather than punishment of the miscreants in his society, suggesting he is aware of the opportunity to harness their energies in a way that will ultimately strengthen the state. In his treatment of Barnardine and Angelo he opts for a public act of pardoning rather than exemplary punishment, thus distancing himself from Angelo’s treatment of Claudio. Vincentio therefore takes advantage of the opportunity to take a more active control over life rather than exercising his power of death over these subjects. The Duke’s repudiation of capital punishment is very much in line with the principles of a biopolitical regime. As Foucault argues, the death penalty becomes an anathema to a government whose political power is predicated upon life rather than the threat of violent punishment:
“As soon as power gave itself the function of administering life, its reason for being and the logic of its exercise – and not the awakening of humanitarian feelings – made it more and more difficult to apply the death penalty. How could power exercise its prerogatives by putting people to death, when its main role was to ensure, sustain, and multiply life, to put this life in order? For such a power, execution was at the same time a limit, a scandal, and a contradiction. Hence capital punishment could not be maintained except by invoking less the enormity of the crime itself than the monstrosity of the criminal, his incorrigibility, and the safeguard of society. One had the right to kill those who represented a biological danger to others23.”
Vincentio’s decision not to execute Angelo or Barnardine, then, exemplifies the extent to which the Viennese government in Measure for Measure is undergoing a transition from being a punitive to a biopolitical regime. As Wilson points out, power, in this case, “will give up its right of death for an even tighter grip on life” and Vincentio has come to understand “that the power of a modern state will depend not on tyrannizing its subjects, but on optimizing desire for the increase of its population24”. Unlike Angelo, Vincentio chooses to invest his political power not in the exemplary punishment of token miscreants, but to reap the potential profits of harnessing life in the political sphere.
15Vincentio makes use of the measures highlighted above as a means to consolidate his power and, in the words of Andrew Majeske, to “refound the state25”. He is able to achieve this by taking advantage of the unique ability of the sovereign to declare a state of exception, in which certain civil rights are suspended for a period of time, ostensibly in the interests of the general public and for the safeguarding of the commonwealth. In Homo Sacer, one of the bases for Giorgio Agamben’s views on sovereign power is Carl Schmitt’s definition of the sovereign as the figure with the ability to declare the state of exception, a state which he argues has increasingly become the norm in modern societies26. In Measure for Measure, the necessary conditions are available as pretexts for Vincentio to take advantage of the opportunity to declare a state of exception; in the second scene, Mistress Overdone complains of the problems besetting Vienna, when she announces that “what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk” (1.2.75-7). In his discussion with Friar Thomas, Vincentio is quite open about the fact that Angelo “supposes me travell’d to Poland;/For so I have strew’d it in the common ear,/And so it is receiv’d” (1.3.14-16). The turbulent political and diplomatic situation in Poland has allowed Vincentio to leave his state in the hands of Angelo, who can also capitalise upon the Duke’s diplomatic mission to authorise his enforcement of draconian laws governing sexual propriety. The Duke also raises the possibility of the onset of anarchy, and the prospect of decorum going “quite athwart” (1.3.30), as a means of legitimising the breach of his subjects’liberty inherent in his schemes which involve disguise, espionage, and clandestine intervention.
16For Agamben, one of the most conspicuous features of modern politics is the “production of bare life”. In his analysis of modern politics, Agamben looks back to two ancient Greek words for “life” – zoé (life in its most basic, unqualified state) and bíos (politically qualified life) – and focuses upon the liminal space between the two concepts they represent. Whilst it is possible to lose one’s status as a representative of bíos by being excluded from the political sphere, it is impossible to return to the state represented by zoé; it is at the point that zoé occupies the political sphere that “bare life” is produced. This is a form of life that is deprived of political agency and defined solely by its physical existence, forming the basis for a biopolitical social body. Agamben’s conception of biopolitics is one that traces patterns of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion of individuals in the political sphere, a trait emblematised by the figure of the homo sacer from Roman law who, after having been banished from society, could be killed but not sacrificed. In Measure for Measure, the audience is also presented with a figure who exists in this state of “inclusive exclusion” (to use Agamben’s term) in the form of Barnardine, an individual who is, according to Vincentio, “Unfit to live or die” (4.3.63). Barbardine has been detained in the prison for nine years under the threat of execution until “undoubtful proof” (4.2.135) of his guilt or innocence can be ascertained. Barnardine’s indefinite detention and his prolonged situation in a state in which he is deprived of liberty without being unequivocally deemed fit for execution places him in a similar state to the paradigm of the homo sacer. It also places him in an analogous position to a long line of political prisoners stretching back to Elizabeth’s reign who were also forced to endure lengthy periods of detention before being finally condemned to death; they include Mary, Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex, and, most recently, Sir Walter Ralegh27. Barnardine’s extended incarceration has induced in him a state of apathy and docility; the Provost describes him as “A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully than a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come: insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal” (4.2.140-143). This has left him in a state in which he has been dehumanised and, as a result, his body can be commodified to such an extent that he is considered a worthy substitute for Claudio on the scaffold. In many ways, the Duke’s eventual pardoning of Barnardine is puzzling since his guilt has now been unquestionably established and he has made no attempt at denying his crime or repenting for it. However, there is a certain logic to Vincentio’s decision to spare Barnadine from the scaffold if it is considered alongside Foucault’s view of the death penalty which, as we have seen, is a form of punishment untenable in a biopolitical regime. As Foucault points out, “capital punishment could not be maintained except by invoking less the enormity of the crime itself than the monstrosity of the criminal, his incorrigibility, and the safeguard of society. One had the right to kill those who represented a biological danger to others28”. Barnardine’s prolonged period of imprisonment has ensured his docility, suggesting he no longer represents a “biological threat to others”; as the Provost observes, Barnardine “hath evermore had the liberty of the prison: give him leave to escape hence, he would not” (4.2.145-147). The Duke has therefore been able to ascertain the docility of Barnardine and reach the conclusion that he can be released in the hope of “better times to come” (5.1.483). If he is no longer considered a threat to the body politic, Vincentio clearly sees no reason to keep him in the prison where he is permitted to live deprived of liberty in a way which serves no benefit to the state. He has far more potential to enhance the Duke’s power as a member of the social body than he is in the prison or on the scaffold.
17The comedic resolution of Measure for Measure is therefore predicated upon the rehabilitation of the various agents of transgression in the city of Vienna. In most of the cases, this is achieved through Vincentio’s use of marriage as a means of guaranteeing docility and social conformity among his subjects, thus ensuring that their transgressive energies are re-channelled for his political purposes. It is therefore somewhat odd that Vincentio, by proposing to Isabella, should attempt to submit himself to his own methods of social control. In this way, he ultimately negates the potential to enforce a more absolutist style of rule by exempting himself from his own laws. This places Vincentio’s outlook in a complex relationship with the sovereign exception, the ability of the sovereign to shape the laws, while at the same time remaining outside of the law. According to Carl Schmitt, this exception is the basis of sovereignty, a view to which much of Agamben’s political theory responds29. Vincentio’s deference to his own rules adds another level to his relationship with James I, with whom he has often been associated30. In The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, James argues that “a good King, although hee be above the Law, will subject and frame his actions thereto, for examples sake to his subjects, and of his owne free-will, but not as subject or bound thereto31”. Here James shows his recognition of the sovereign’s privileged position in relation to the law by asserting that the monarch is ultimately above the law and the sovereign’s observance of the law will be voluntary rather than obligatory. Vincentio’s recognition that the voluntary submission to his own rules, and the biopolitically determined laws of his state, will be of benefit to his subjects’ impressions of him serves to align this aspect of Vincentio’s rule with James’s particular brand of kingship.
18I have therefore argued that in Measure for Measure, Shakespeare presents two distinct forms of the exercising of sovereign power. Whilst Angelo favours the enforcement of strict laws governing sexual propriety, as well as harnessing the spectacle of public displays of punishment to avoid making “a scarecrow of the law” (2.1.1), Vincentio sees more potential for enhancing his sovereign power by preserving the lives of the transgressors in his society. His re-appropriation of such individuals as Angelo, Claudio, Juliet, Lucio, and Kate Keepdown back into society takes place on his own terms, with marriage acting as a means for their re-establishment into the social body. By taking, or at least attempting to take, Isabella as his bride, he also overrules the limits imposed upon her body by the nunnery and appropriates her into the body politic. In a similar way, he redeploys the subversive energies of the brothel and makes use of them to serve his own ends. Vincentio’s actions all contribute to the creation and maintenance of a docile, healthy, and reproducible social body. For these reasons, Lucio’s metaphor of the body politic as a “horse whereon the governor doth ride” (1.2.149) becomes even more appropriate when applied to the state as it has been redefined by Vincentio than it was under the temporary governance of Angelo. In this way, Measure for Measure dramatises Vienna as a society in transition; it is gradually turning away from having sovereign power predicated upon the traditional apparatuses of discipline and punishment, opting instead for a society in which power is represented by the body politic. Measure for Measure thus portrays Viennese society occupying the “threshold of modernity” observed by Foucault.
Notes de bas de page
1Such readings include Wilson Richard, “Prince of Darkness: Foucault’s Shakespeare,” in Measure for Measure: Theory in Practice, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1996, p. 133-178 (esp. p. 150-175) and Dollimore Jonathan, “Transgression and Surveillance in Measure for Measure,” in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, 1985; reprint, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1992, p. 72-87.
2Foucault Michel, The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, translated by Robert Hurley, 1978; reprint, London, Penguin, 1998, p. 136.
3Ibid, p. 139.
4Ibid, p. 138.
5Ibid, p. 139.
6Ibid, p. 143.
7Wilson, p. 136 (my emphases).
8Ibid, p. 137.
9Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Daniel Heller-Roazen (trans.), Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 83.
10Ibid, p. 15.
11Shakespeare William, Measure for Measure, J. W. Lever (ed.), The Arden Shakespeare, 1965; reprint, London, Methuen, 1972, 1.3.19-31.
12Dollimore, p. 73.
13Hanson Elizabeth, “Measure for Measure and the Law of Nature,” in The Law in Shakespeare, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 250.
14Wilson, p. 151.
15Shakespeare William, Hamlet, Ann Thomson and Neil Taylor (ed.), The Arden Shakespeare, London, Thomson Learning, 2006, 3.1.120.
16Knoppers Laura Lunger, “(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” ELR, n° 23, 1993, p. 450-471. For comment on Isabella’s chastity and the social context, see Baines Barbara J., “Assaying the Power of Chastity in Measure for Measure,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 30, n° 2, 1990, p. 283-301.
17Shakespeare William, Timon of Athens, Anthony B. Dawson and Gretchen E. Minton (ed.), The Arden Shakespeare, London, Cengage Learning, 2008, 4.3.150-63.
18Dekker Thomas, in Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts, Ivo Kamps and Karen Raber (ed.), Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 277.
19For comment on marriage in Measure for Measure, see Sokol B. J. and Sokol Mary, Shakespeare, Law, and Marriage, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003 p. 26-29; Chamberlain Stephanie, “Defrocking Ecclesiastical Authority: Measure for Measure and the Struggle for Matrimonial Reform in Early Modern England,” Ben Jonson Journal, n° 7, 2000, p. 115-128; Scott Margaret, “‘Our City’s Institutions’: Some Further Reflections on the Marriage Contracts in Measure for Measure,” ELH, n° 49, 1982, p. 790-804; and Evett David, “‘What Is Yours Is Mine’: Sexual and Social Complementarity in the Trial Scenes of Measure for Measure,” in Justice, Women, and Power in English Renaissance Drama, p. 140-152. For a general overview of marriage customs in the early modern period, see Adair Richard, Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1996.
20Marcus Leah, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and its Discontents, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988, p. 172.
21Ibid, p. 172.
22For further comment on the use of marriage as a means of closure, see Adelman Janet, “Bed Tricks: On Marriage as the End of Comedy in All’s Well that Ends Well and Measure for Measure,” in Shakespeare’s Personality, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1989, p. 151-174.
23Foucault, p. 138.
24Wilson, p. 160-161.
25Majeske Andrew, “Equity’s Absence: The Extremity of Claudio’s Prosecution and Barnardine’s Pardon in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure,” Law and Literature, vol. 21, n° 2, Summer 2009, p. 169-184, p. 169.
26. Agamben, p. 11-12.
27The parallel with Ralegh has recently been observed by Majeske, p. 179. On the punishment of political treachery and its relation to Shakespeare’s comedies, see Wilson Richard, Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, p. 113-157.
28Foucault, p. 138.
29See SCHMITT Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab (trans.), 1985; reprint, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 5-15.
30For comment, see SCHANZER Ernest, “Justice and King James,” in Measure for Measure: A Selection of Critical Essays, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1971, p. 233-242; Levin Richard, New Readings vs. Old Plays: Recent Trends in the Reinterpretation of English Renaissance Drama, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 171-193; Goldberg Jonathan, James I and the Politics of Literature: Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne, and their Contemporaries, 1983; reprint, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1989, p. 231-239; Tennenhouse Leonard, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare’s Genres, London, Methuen, 1986, p. 154-159.
31James VI and I, The Trew Law of Free Monarchies in Selected Writings, edited by Neil Rhodes, Jennifer Richards and Joseph Marshall, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2003, p. 271.
Auteur
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Daniel Cadman
An associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University where he was recently awarded his PhD. He has published work on Samuel Daniel and Fulke Greville and has written for Renaissance Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Notes and Queries, and The Year’s Work in English Studies. He is also a contributor to the Lost Plays Database. He is currently working on a book-length study on neo-Senecan drama.
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