The “two usuries” in Measure for Measure1
p. 175-183
Texte intégral
1In the third scene of act four of Measure for Measure, Pompey, the brash servant to Mistress Overdone, gives the audience a list of the inmates of the prison in Vienna: individuals drawn from the low-life of the city and its suburbs. Amongst the petty crooks and more serious offenders is to be found a certain Master Rash, a reckless spendthrift, if one is to believe the evidence of his name, who finds himself in gaol for the non-repayment of a debt to a usurer. Master Froth, the foolish heir of a father recently deceased, with his “fourscore pound a year” (2.1.122) – one of the “idle rich” according to Stanley Wells2 – is in sore danger of finding himself in the same predicament as Master Rash if he does not heed the wise words of Escalus and forego the company of those who will otherwise bleed him dry and lead him inevitably into the clutches of the usurer. Such characters play a central role in many Elizabethan and Jacobean comedies, the action of which is centred on their attempts to outwit the moneylender and retrieve their patrimony. However in Measure for Measure, the victims of the usurer play only a peripheral role, although the practice of usury in the literal sense of the creation of an overplus in the form of interest, or “use,” on a monetary transaction, and metaphorically in the process of natural procreation, figures strongly in the plot of the play.
Use
2Usury was still one of the major controversies in Elizabethan England. Indeed for centuries the question of moneylending and the relationship between the lender and the borrower had been hotly debated by churchmen, lawmakers and philosophers. For the highest in the land as for the lowliest householder the moneylender was an economic necessity, and yet the sometimes exorbitant rates of interest which the usurer demanded made him an object of resentment and hatred.
3Churchmen had railed from the pulpit against the practice. Christian charity, they taught, should govern the relations between men, and not hope of gain. The preacher Miles Mosse declared in a sermon that “the first, the second, the third point of the law, the beginning, the middest, the ending of all duties to men, is love towards our neighbour3…” He therefore concluded that “Christian charity forbiddeth men to take usury4”. Such arguments were based on Christ’s teachings in the gospels exhorting men to “lend hoping for nothing again5”.
4The law had long forbidden usury, but the legal ban had done nothing to halt the spread of the practice or to limit its excesses. In 1571 a law was passed tolerating usury if the interest on the loan did not exceed 10%. This law was intended to curb the most blatant abuses engendered through the lack of an efficient means of control. After 1571 therefore, the usurer needed to call up reserves of ingenuity if he wished to continue to make huge profits and still keep on the safe side of the law. The “commodity swindle” was one of the means employed by the moneylender to circumvent the 10% limit on interest rates. Master Rash, we learn, was the victim of such a practice: “First, here’s young Master Rash; he’s in for a commodity of brown paper and old ginger, nine score and seventeen pounds; of which he made five marks ready money…” (4.3.4-6). The young man had no doubt requested a loan of “nine score and seventeen pounds,” to which the usurer had replied that he had not sufficient ready money to supply his needs. He had instead offered a consignment of “brown paper and old ginger” which he claimed to be of equivalent value to the sum requested. The borrower, hard pressed for cash, had agreed to the bargain. However when he came to sell the goods he could only raise a paltry “five marks”. The usurer would nonetheless demand the reimbursement of the entire sum of £ 197 when the debt fell due. As no interest had been demanded, theoretically the usurer remained within the bounds of the law.
5Philosophers had spoken out against lending upon interest arguing that money was barren and could not “make” money6. Aristotle in Politics had thus pointed out that usury was an unnatural practice:
“There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of any modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural7.”
6Inanimate things, like money, are sterile and should remain so. The usurer was therefore contravening natural law by demanding interest on a monetary transaction the aim of which was to make his gold beget more gold. Francis Bacon took up Aristotle’s argument in his essay “Of Usury” stating: “It is against nature for money to beget money8”. Thomas Lodge echoed Bacon’s words in Catharos:
“The first proofe is taken from Aristotle, who saith, that money cannot engender money, for it is against Nature, that a thing of it selfe barraine, should beare frute. Hee then that seeketh frute from his money, which is not admitted in the number of natural genetrices, how sinneth he against the right natural9?”
7In the popular imagination the usurer became a pimp, a bawd to his money bags. The link between money and sex was of course nothing new, and gold, “[the] common whore of mankind10,” was made to bring forth more through the intermediary of the usurer. Thomas Dekker in The Seven Deadly Sins of London denounced the practice: “The usurer lives by the lechery of money, and is bawd to his own bags, taking a fee that they may ingender11.” Each penny of interest was a “babe of darknesse12” brought into the world away from the clear light of day with the help of the devil. This was a monstrous progeny: “I here say some call usury a monstrous beaste, because she bringeth foorth monsters from time to time, by excessive encrease of gayne13.” Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale exploits these widely-held beliefs when he sells ballads about the usurer’s unnatural “children” to gullible country girls:
Autolycus. – Here’s one, to a very doleful tune, how a usurer’s wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden; and how she longed to eat adders’heads and toads carbonadoed.
Mopsa. – Is it true, think you?
Autolycus. – Very true, and but a month old.
Dorcas. – Bless me from marrying a usurer14!
8These are the children that the usurer loves more than his own natural, biological offspring:
Come on swete bags of gold, come on with a good will
I on you so tender; and ye soo forward styll?
Come forwarde and I pray youe swete bags; ah, will you soo?
Come or I must drawe youe whether ye will or noo.
I knowe youre desire ye woulde faine bee in my chest
When the bealie is full the bones would be at reast.
Bee contente awhile I will couche you all up soone
Where ye should not be spied neither by Sonne nor Mone15.
9The usurer was feared and hated, and his practice was the butt of universal censure. However, curiously, the negative arguments against the practice were turned upside down and applied to the natural process of procreation. Nature lends life to man as an investment, and enjoins him to make it fruitful. She is thus placed in the role of creditor expecting a healthy return on her initial outlay. The Duke states this explicitly in the opening scene of the play:
[…] nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use (1.1.36-40).
10A young man was encouraged to follow the ambiguous example of the moneylender and use the “treasure” of his beloved’s body in order to bring forth interest in the form of children. Indeed Angelo himself refers to the “treasures of [Isabella’s] body” in 2.4.96. Such is the basis of Leander’s argument in Christopher Marlowe’s poem when he attempts to persuade Hero to abandon her chastity and yield herself up to his desire. If the young woman does not acquiesce to his request, her virgin body will remain as sterile as money which has not been put to use, “for both, not us’d/Are of like worth16”. Shakespeare in the first sonnets describes the young man who fails in his duty to produce children as a “profitless usurer17”. The poet encourages him to “breed” ten children rather than only one, referring no doubt to the provisions of the 1571 law on usury:
That’s for thyself to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier be it ten for one.
Ten times thyself were happier then thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee18.
11A woman’s body was assimilated to fertile earth from which children must be harvested. A maiden’s “garden” would be sure to bear “living flowers19”: “For where is she so fair whose uneared womb/Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry20?”
12Similarly, Lucio uses the agricultural analogy when recounting to Isabella the reason for her brother’s arrest:
Your brother and his lover have embrac’d;
As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time
That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb
Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry (1.4.40-44).
Abuse
13Nature’s largesse is to be used, but the manner of its use is of paramount importance in the play. In Lucio’s eyes, Claudio’s “act of fornication” (5.1.73) hardly seems “criminal” at all. It appears simply to be part of the natural creative processes of all nature. The land must be cultivated to bring forth plenty, and “the world must be peopled21”. Increase from the wealth of the body is what Pompey refers to as the “merriest” usury (3.2.7), presumably as it involves an element of pleasure. Of the “two usuries” evoked in this scene, Pompey laments the fact that the “merr [y]” one falls foul of the “strict statutes and most biting laws” (1.3.19) of Vienna, newly re-implemented by the Duke’s harsh deputy, whereas monetary usury, the “worser” kind, is “allowed by order of law” (3.2.7-8). Lucio attempts to minimize the gravity of Claudio’s action. For him it is a mere “game of tick-tack” (1.2.181). He would administer thanks to the perpetrator rather than chastisement (1.4.28). The Provost, whose task it is to enforce the law, would allow him to commit the “crime” again, rather than punish him for it (2.3.13-15). Angelo however holds a very different view. The “sliding” of Claudio is a not a cause for “merriment” (2.4.115-116), it is a “filthy vice” (2.4.42) deserving of death, because it lacks the official recognition of church and state. He chides the virtuous Isabella for attempting to make it appear less serious than it is. He employs the metaphor of coining which was a frequent enough image in Shakespeare’s time for illicit sex. He considers the unlawful procreation of man in God’s image to be as worthy of the ultimate penalty as the illegal counterfeiting of the king’s coin (2.4.42-49). Claudio has made unchecked use of his “liberty” (1.2.118) and squandered nature’s gift by creating life irresponsibly. He has “surfeit[ed]” and made “immoderate use” of Juliet’s treasure (1.2.118-119), the “unhapp[y]” (1.2.145) result of which will be a child stamped with the imprint of bastardy, a clipped coin. In his prodigality he is not unlike the spendthrift, Master Rash, who has frittered away his fortune without thought for the consequences. Both find themselves in prison as a consequence of their extravagant behaviour.
14The opposite is true of Angelo who by his own admission has led an austere life (2.4.154). He spurns nature’s gifts and refuses to bring forth profit from the body, “he doth rebate and blunt his natural edge” (1.4.60). The only profit he values is intellectual: “profits of the mind, study and fast” (1.4.61). In a letter to a young man urging him to pass on his heritage to children, Erasmus writes: “Nature suffereth very little to waxe barren22,” and yet Angelo fails to heed nature’s bidding. He is associated with barrenness and sterility throughout the play23. He is cold-blooded, “[his] blood/Is very snow-broth” (1.4.57-58), indeed he “scarce confesses that his blood flows” (1.3.51-52). He is incapable of generation being “ungenerative” (3.2.108) and even “ungenitured,” and will thus “unpeople the province” (3.2.167-168). If Claudio is the spendthrift, Angelo has more in common with the miser who keeps his wealth firmly under lock and key, “Where it should not be spied neither by Sonne nor Mone24”. He resembles the third servant in the parable of the talents recounted in the gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke25, who, when asked by his lord to render an account of how he has used the “talent” which had been conferred upon him, confesses that he has hidden it and made nothing of it, whereas his fellow servants have greatly increased their endowment. Angelo has indeed failed to use his “talent” and “treasure is abus’d/When misers keep it26”. The wastrel Claudio and the niggard Angelo are both culpable of having abused nature’s bounty, albeit in opposite ways.
15Images of financial interest and increase link Claudio, and indeed Angelo, to the goings-on of the brothels in Vienna’s suburbs. In these “common houses” (2.1.43), the principal aim is to generate material gain, procreation being merely an unfortunate consequence of the activity carried on there, as Lucio learns to his cost, for “Mistress Kate Keep-Down [is] with child by him” (3.2.193-194). Natural creative processes are subverted and all but destroyed as can be seen from the recurrent images of disease in the play (1.2.41-53; 3.2.54-55). Mistress Overdone’s interest, and that of her servant Pompey, is therefore self-interest. They make their living from the couplings between their customers and the women in their employ. The Duke reprimands Pompey for his trade in the following way:
Fie, sirrah, a bawd, a wicked bawd;
The evil that thou causest to be done,
That is thy means to live. Do thou but think
What’tis to cram a maw or clothe a back
From such a filthy vice. Say to thyself
From their abominable and beastly touches
I drink, I eat, array myself and live.
Canst thou believe thy living is a life,
So stinkingly depending? (3.2.18-26).
16Claudio’s attitude towards Juliet is a long way distant from the “beastly touches” that go on in the brothel, although Angelo’s desire for Isabella comes close: he means to “profit” from the novice’s body in order to gratify his lust (2.4.127). There can be no doubt about Claudio’s love for his betrothed, but financial considerations are not entirely absent from the relationship. The official celebration of their marriage was delayed until such a time as Juliet’s dowry would be forthcoming. The public announcement of their union was therefore not made:
This we came not to
Only for the propagation of a dower
Remaining in the coffer of her friends,
From whom we thought to hide our love
Till time had made them for us… (1.2.138-142).
17Claudio speaks of the “propagation” of the dowry, as if it were to be brought forth from the family coffers of the bride by a process which apes that of natural procreation27. The usurer and his unnatural dealings spring to mind. Likewise prudent self-interest governs Angelo’s decision to cancel his marriage to Mariana after the irretrievable loss of her dowry.
Promises
18The law of 1571 recognized the moneylender’s trade and entitled him to collect interest on the sums that he had lent provided that it did not exceed 10%. To this effect, a contract was drawn up stipulating the names of the parties involved, the rate of interest, and the date upon which the debt was to be repaid. Such a document binding the borrower to the lender became a necessary one in order to ensure that the lender would be reimbursed with advantage when the debt fell due, as the mere word of the borrower promising to repay no longer constituted a sufficient guarantee. “Debtors […] promise […] infinitely28” and yet fail to pay what they owe, therefore a universally recognized contract had to oblige them to keep their word. The legal recognition of nature’s interest in the form of children also necessitated a form of contract in order to save the issue from the stigma of bastardy, and the parents from the sin of fornication. The two forms of pre-contract: sponsalia per verba de praesenti and sponsalia per verba de futuro, simply required a promise on the part of the persons concerned that they would marry at the present time, or at some future date.
19Juliet was “fast” Claudio’s wife by virtue of the de praesenti pre-contract, although the marriage had not been publicly solemnized: “Save that we do the denunciation lack/Of outward order” (1.2.137-138). Their union was kept secret: “we thought it meet to hide our love,” and their “mutual entertainment” was carried out “stealth[ily]” (1.2.141-142). The furtive nature of their relationship equated it with lechery in the eyes of the Duke’s deputy29. Angelo and Mariana had promised to marry in the future, de futuro. They were bound together, in Mariana’s words “as strongly/As words could make up vows” (5.1.226-227). And finally Lucio had most informally promised to marry Kate Keep-Down (3.2.194), but no date had apparently been specified. Claudio, Angelo and Lucio had all pledged to marry, but only Claudio was prepared to honour his promise. He stands out among the perjured characters as a representative of a former, probably imagined age, when a man’s word was his bond. Already in the second scene of the play, Lucio underlines the fact that his friend can be relied upon to keep his word. He can recognize in another a quality which he himself does not possess: “[Claudio] promised to meet me two hours since, and he was ever precise in promise-keeping” (1.2.68-70). Angelo could legally wriggle out of his vow, as the financial terms under which he had agreed to marry Mariana no longer held. He was within his legal rights to do so, although morally, as the Duke points out, he is guilty of “promise breach” (5.1.403). Lucio surely never intended to keep his promise and he has broken it without any legal or moral justification.
20Because men cannot keep their word, and in order to ensure that the children born of these unions are not deformed by the stain of bastardy, that they are not “babe[s] of darknesse30,” the Duke forces Angelo and Lucio to make good their promises. He orders immediate marriage ceremonies to be celebrated, thus imposing upon them both the official recognition of the state, in his own person, and that of the church, in the person of Friar Peter.
21Interest then, in the sense of increase, was double-edged: it was frowned upon when the usurer abused it by demanding exorbitant rates, but encouraged when applied to the fruits of nature’s bounty. However in both cases, formal recognition was necessary in order to bind the borrower to the lender, the husband to his wife, and to make certain that the ‘use’ thus generated, in the form of financial advantage or natural progeny, was legitimate. The interest levied by the usurer, referred to by Elizabethan playwrights and pamphleteers as a bastard, “an infant begotten against nature31,” or an “ungodly brat32” was legalized by the law of 1571, just as children were legally recognized by the public celebration of the marriage of their parents. Thanks to the timely intervention of the Duke enforcing the fulfillment of past promises in the final scene of Measure for Measure, the issue of nature’s debtors in the play will be free from the blemish of illegitimacy33.
Notes de bas de page
1All references to Measure for Measure are taken from The Arden Shakespeare, J. W. Lever (ed.), London, Methuen, (1965) 2008. All references to Shakespeare’s plays other than Measure for Measure are taken from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, W. J. Craig (ed.), London, Oxford University Press, (1905) 1994.
2Wells S., “Money in Shakespeare’s Comedies,” in M.-T. Jones-Davies (dir.), Shakespeare et l’argent, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1993, p. 161-171, p. 168. Wells points out that the Stratford school-master earned only £20 per annum. In comparison, Master Froth would have been fairly well-off.
3Mosse M., The Arraignment and Conviction of Usurie, London, 1595, p. 84.
4Ibid., p. 85.
5Luke, 6: 35.
6The Greek word for interest, tokos, signified the act of bringing forth offspring.
7Aristotle, Politics, I.10. [<http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html>] (last consulted 26th June 2012).
8Bacon F., “Of Usury,” Bacon’s Essays, M. J. Hawkins (ed.), London, Everyman, J. M. Dent, 1994, p. 107.
9Lodge T., Catharos, The Complete Works, vol. 2, New York, Russell & Russell, 1963, p. 34.
10Shakespeare W., Timon of Athens, 4.3.42.
11Dekker T., The Seven Deadly Sins of London, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, vol. 2, A. B. Grosart (ed.), London, The Huth Library, 1886, p. 28.
12Wilson T., Discourse Upon Usury, R. H. Tawney (ed.), London, G. Bell and Sons, 1925, p. 259.
13Wilson T., ibid., p. 241.
14Shakespeare W., The Winter’s Tale, 4.3.264-269.
15Anon., Respublica, Early English Text Society, W. W. Greg (ed.), London, Oxford University Press, 1952, 3.4.752-759.
16Marlowe C., Hero and Leander, Plays and Poems, London, Everyman, J. M. Dent, 1967, p. 380.
17Shakespeare W., sonnet 4.7.
18Shakespeare W., sonnet 6. 7-10.
19Shakespeare W., sonnet 16. 6-7.
20Shakespeare W., sonnet 3. 5-6.
21Shakespeare W., Much Ado About Nothing, 2.3.262-263.
22Wilson T., The Arte of Rhetorique, G. H. Mair (ed.), Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1909, p. 61. Erasmus’letter was translated and published in Thomas Wilson’s The Arte of Rhetorique in 1553. Thomas Wilson was also the author of Discourse upon Usury, 1552.
23Marc Shell has argued that the novice sister Isabella and the false brother Vincentio also refuse to use their endowments by foregoing the demands of reproduction in favour of clerical celibacy thus posing a threat to the future of society. Shell M., The End of Kinship: Measure for Measure, Incest and the Ideal of Universal Siblinghood, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1988.
24Anon., Respublica, Early English Text Society, W. W. Greg (ed.), London, Oxford University Press, 1952, 3.4.759.
25Matthew 25: 14-30. Luke 19: 12-28. It has been remarked by T. L. Nugent that by conferring on Angelo the task of government the Duke assumes the role of the master in the parable of the talents. He leaves his duchy in the hands of his servant, and on his return intends to assess his investment. Nugent T. L., “Usury and Counterfeiting in Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London and The Three Lords and The Three Ladies of London, and in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure,” in L. Woodbridge (ed.), Money and the Age of Shakespeare, Essays in New Economic Criticism, New York, Palgrave and Macmillan, 2003, p. 201-217, p. 209.
26Marlowe C., Hero and Leander, Plays and Poems, London, Everyman, J. M. Dent, 1967, p. 380.
27See note 1.2.139, Measure for Measure, op. cit.
28Shakespeare W., 2 Henry IV, epilogue, 17-18.
29The fourth Lateran Council of 1215 forbade clandestine marriages and required them to be publicly announced in church by priests.
30Wilson T., Discourse Upon Usury, R. H. Tawney (ed.), London, G. Bell and Sons, 1925, p. 259.
31Lodge T., Catharos, The Complete Works, vol. 2, New York, Russell and Russell, 1963, p. 34.
32Dekker T., The Seven Deadly Sins of London, The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, op. cit., p. 36.
33The play’s conclusion has been the subject of much discussion by theatre directors and critics alike. T. L. Nugent questions the Duke’s “fantasy of marriage as the controlling mechanism that reestablishes social order” (my emphasis). She underlines the fact that at the end of the play, the Duke reveals to Isabella that Claudio is still alive immediately before proposing marriage. Nugent goes on to write, “[The Duke’s] implicit exchange of brother for marriage is uncomfortably close to Angelo’s offer of brother for sex,” thus blurring the distinction between marriage and prostitution which the marriage ceremonies in the final scene were supposed to restore. Nugent T. L., op. cit., p. 213.
Auteur
-
Wendy Ribeyrol
Maître de conférences à l’université Paris-Est Créteil de 1991 jusqu’en 2011, a écrit sa thèse sur le thème de l’usure sur la scène élisabéthaine et jacobéenne. Elle a publié plusieurs articles sur la société et le théâtre élisabéthains. Elle est l’auteure de traductions d’actes bilingues de colloques et de catalogues d’expositions. Elle participe par ailleurs au « Projet Shakespeare » qui a pour but d’initier les collégiens de l’Académie de Créteil au théâtre de Shakespeare.
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