Gender and Sexuality in Measure for Measure’s Confession Scene
p. 219-233
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1As more than one critic has noted, Measure for Measure is Shakespeare’s most theological play: a Biblical passage, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount recounted in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, provides the title and is Shakespeare’s framing feature of the drama; the Duke disguises himself as a friar, even carrying out the duties of his order; and more significantly, almost all characters in the play commit some kind of sin for which they feel compelled, by the actions of the Duke, to confess, repent, and seek absolution, which in turn leads to reconciliation with God, themselves, and their community. In fact, a close examination finds Measure for Measure obsessively returning to notions of confession. In this play, Shakespeare primarily offers two competing and gendered views of confession; ironically, Angelo’s male, legitimate public confession does little to alleviate his guilt before his God or his crushing personal despair, just as it fails to make any significant improvement to his public reputation, some of the central aims of the act. Adding an additional layer to this irony, Isabella’s forced, but false and female confession, her mere public performance of guilt, has the opposite effect on the novice nun – through her lie, she is genuinely reconciled to God, herself, and the community at large. My central argument is that Shakespeare’s ironic and gendered stance is posed to highlight the most beneficial aspects of performance itself; namely, the “role” theatre can “play” in morally instructing an audience. This, of course, is no coincidence coming from one of the most famous playwrights of the Elizabethan era, an age when many theological questions about “proper” confession were still being widely debated.
2I would like to begin with arguably the most disturbing and uncomfortable confession in the play, Angelo’s. Yet, it might be worthwhile to ponder what it is that Angelo must confess in the first place. To be sure, Angelo has acted immorally; he has lusted, lied, and manipulated. He has also clearly abused his power as magistrate. But are his misdeeds sins or crimes? Are his actions punishable by God as well as the state, both culminating in the figure of the Duke? It is difficult for some students to pinpoint exactly what it is that Angelo is to be executed for in the final scene. Both Melvin Seiden and Craig A. Bernthal add important dimensions to any discussion of Angelo, whose crimes and/or sins are less obvious and more complicated than we would like to admit.
3Seiden points out that Angelo has been kept untainted by the actions of Vincentio, who at every turn “was there to prevent [his] evil wishes from culminating in brutal consequences1”. Angelo’s most offensive charge would arguably be the murder, or rather, the execution of Claudio. And yet the Duke has slyly blocked this miscarriage of justice by substituting another prisoner in his place, one of many physical substitutions in the play. Therefore, “Angelo must be acquitted” at least of murder. Bernthal, however, sees Angelo’s situation differently, claiming outright that Angelo has committed no act for which he could be held culpable. Merely hoping to commit a crime or sin is not a crime, though it may be a sin, he reminds. Bernthal writes, “in Angelo’s case, the element of illegal action appears to be missing2”. He adds that even the execution of Claudio, would mean that he had received “what was coming to him under a literal application of the law”. Although Angelo may have chosen to enforce the law for arguably the wrong reasons, “that is no crime, […] laws exist to be enforced”. Moreover, he reminds us that “Angelo had the right to execute Claudio for fornication,” at least in terms of his duties as the leader of Vienna in Vincentio’s absence. To execute a man he has the legal right to execute is not a crime at all because the intended action is not criminal. And, of course, we should not forget that in fact, Claudio has not actually been executed.
4Surely Angelo’s interactions with Isabella, his attempted seduction of an almost nun should be judged differently? Actually, the same logic applies: though most certainly manipulative and immoral, Angelo never actually commits the act; he winds up in bed with Mariana, a woman he had promised to marry years before. The real question then becomes, can or even should Angelo be held guilty for attempting to commit fornication with Isabella? For, even Isabella herself reminds,
His act did not o’ertake his bad intent,
And must be buried but as an intent
That perish’d by the way (5.1.451-453).
Bernthal tells us definitively, “the answer is no, for in Shakespeare’s time, the criminal law of ‘attempts’ was virtually non-existent3”. British subjects could not to be tried for merely wanting to commit a crime. In fact, in the case of seduction specifically, “Attempted fornication was not a crime in England at the time Shakespeare was writing, if ever”. The intention to do wrong is not actually a crime; however, does that mean it’s also not a sin? Probably not. The real irony is that while Angelo is the most manipulative character in the play, perhaps with the exception of the Duke, and certainly even though he has demonstrated a penchant for wickedness heads and shoulders above Claudio, he may not be guilty of a crime at all. Thus, although Angelo’s actions are sins, they are not criminal acts for which he can be legally executed by the Duke.
5Unlike Angelo, who we instinctively feel has need to confess, it is usually agreed by students of Shakespeare that Isabella is completely innocent, that there are no crimes or sins with which we can charge her. What is it that Isabella, the novice nun has done wrong? It cannot be simply: we need Isabella’s virtue publicly displayed in order to create a positive example for right action, just as we need Angelo’s vice publicly condemned in order to provide a negative example from which we can learn a moral lesson.
6Some modern critics are especially hard on Isabella, while others, typically feminist critics, tend to defend her. Most scholars believe that Isabella has committed, if not exactly sins, at least three “moral errors”: first, she is what has been termed “cruel”. That is, in not yielding her chastity up to Angelo in return for the safety and security, the very life of her brother, Seiden and others call Isabella “unkind,” or more insulting still, “The prude of the third act4”. But surely this is unfair, stripping Isabella of her power of choice, as other scholars like Laura Lunger Knoppers and Elizabeth Marie Pope have noted. Pope defends Isabella: “Since to yield to Angelo would mean breaking a law of God, Isabella is fully entitled to resist him5.” In fact, Isabella is obligated not to submit to Angelo’s unholy sexual desires, which are tantamount to rape. She is not entitled to let Angelo and Claudio “use her mercy as their bawd”. Her duty, as William Perkins reminds us in his Treatise of Christian Equity and Modernation (1604) “is not to wink at [sins], but to take notice of them, and show open dislike of them6”. Angelo and Claudio are asking Isabella not merely for a bodily sacrifice of a few minutes, but as she fully believes, an everlasting damnation of her soul. They are not asking for a momentary yielding, but an eternity of damnation for fornication. While some might claim that Isabella’s sin “would be cancelled out by the circumstances of victimization and constraint,” that surely God would forgive her in light of why she’s made the decision to go along with Angelo’s plan, as Anne Barton tells us, it’s not that simple. A cancelling out would “create another simpliciation of a decision which Shakespeare presents as complex7”.
7One might also suggest that in the final scene, the Duke uses Isabella in the same way that Claudio and Angelo wish to, sexually. It is through Isabella’s sexuality that the Duke traps Angelo into confessing in the first place. And, in the trial scene, the Duke convinces Isabella to play the role of fornicating woman. As Knoppers notes, “Isabella, who earlier could scarcely bring herself to tell her brother what Angelo had in mind, now confesses in public that she has committed fornication with Angelo. In publicly stating her loss of chastity, Isabella is yielding her reputation, although not her body, up to shame8”. Although Isabella has not literally lost her chastity in this action, she almost might as well have – everyone on stage believes it to be true.
8But, what else has Isabella done wrong? Isabella’s first sin, which makes her “a pious murderer9,” leads directly to her second. Critics insist that Isabella’s selfishness in maintaining her chastity really involves not sexual experience at all, but rather is an extension of her narrow notion of justice. According to James Black, for instance, Isabella is much like Angelo at the beginning of the play; she too, sees only “narrowness and the irreversible nature of justice10”. Seiden agrees: “Isabella’s rigid principles are like Angelo’s, we judge them to be, feel them to be, as a vast amount of critical commentary testifies, inhumanly severe11.” Barton calls her “a kindred spirit [to Angelo], another virtuous absolutist12”. But, unkindness and narrowly defining justice, even lacking mercy in general, are not the only moral errors that Isabella commits. In fact, her final sin is actually in violation of one of the Ten Commandments: in staging Angelo’s entrapment, even if it is coordinated by the Duke, Isabella lies. That is, her public confession about having lost her virginity to Angelo outside the bounds of marriage is in fact, a false confession, a lie. And yet, it is through reciting this untruth and the aftermath that follows which allows Isabella, ironically, to achieve a full reconciliation with herself, God, and her community, even as her understanding of justice and mercy expand.
9As is plainly clear at this point, Shakespeare refuses to offer only one kind of confession in this highly complex play; in fact, there are some characters, like Barnardine and Claudio, who despite their well-known sins, never do confess. At least one character, Lucio, is directly coerced, under threat of death, into confessing. There are also characters like Juliet and Mariana, who have their private confessions to the Duke, while he’s pretending to be a friar, publicly betrayed though to good purpose. Given the different kinds of confession witnessed on stage, it should be no surprise to suggest at this point that Shakespeare may well have been experimenting with the different types of confession available to the audience during the English Reformation. These include predominately three different Christian churches: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.
10Angelo’s is not an effective Roman Catholic confession, although on the surface it seems to mimic one, primarily because Angelo confesses to a priest, a friar. It bears pointing out that the abuses of friars were a common complaint to Calvinists, with Calvin himself loathing Catholic confession because the power to absolve sin was located in the priest and did not come as a product of man’s individual relationship with God, which is why he called Catholic confession “pestilent13”. As Roman Catholic priest F. Lewis de Granada makes very clear, successful Catholic confession requires a priest:
“whoeuer afterwards presumeth to praise vnto God the father for ressimion of his sinnes, […] by comtempte out of his praiers, shall not obteine perdon of his sinnes, but offenth almightie God mosts grieuoustie, in breakinge the order of his diuine will, and ordinaunce, which he hath appointed in his Catholike Church14”.
However tempting it may be to claim Shakespeare as a reticent Catholic in the final trial scene of Measure for Measure, Angelo’s confession is really delivered to Duke Vincentio, who has been merely posing as a friar. Because he is by no means an actual priest, this cannot be a sincere Roman Catholic confession.
11Examining Protestant church doctrine shows the many ways in which Angelo’s confession also fails to meet the formal aspects of their requirements for the act, regardless of the sect. I will briefly examine the dogmas of Luther, Calvin, and Hooker. As Walter J. Koehler, an ordained Lutheran minister has noted, “the responsibility of the pastor is not to judge the heart of the penitent, but to hear the confession and bestow the absolution on all who deserve it15”. The faithful are carefully instructed to esteem absolution as a great and powerful experience. Koehler points out that “It is not the voice or word of the man who speaks [absolution], but it is the voice of God…”. Martin Luther’s 1520 Large Catechism teaches that “God requires us to believe this absolution as much as if we heard God’s voice from heaven, that we should joyfully comfort ourselves with absolution, and that we should know that through such faith we obtain forgiveness of sins16”. Thus, absolution is achieved based solely on faith; faith in God cures the penitent’s heart and alleviates his guilt. The spectacle of Angelo’s humiliating public confession sufficiently reminds him of the awesome power of God, and though spoken by a man, here the Duke, absolution should be seen as coming directly from God. It is instantaneous and should immediately produce a joyful comfort in the penitent’s heart, feeling that their faith has reconciled them to God as well as themselves and their community. But Angelo does not feel any of these things. Instead, he is still trapped in his guilt:
O my dread lord,
I should be guiltier than my guiltiness,
To think I can be undiscernible,
When I perceive your Grace, like power divine,
Hath looked upon my passes (5.1.366-370).
But, Angelo’s is also arguably not a successful Calvinist confession, which as Huston Diehl argues, would not only heal the penitent, but also remind the community that they too are flawed and need to confess their sins. While Angelo’s confession may serve as a way of activating the community, the small community on the stage and perhaps in the larger viewing audience, it does not actually help Angelo himself. Rather, it only reconfirms the extent of his own despair. As Calvin predicts, “men hauing made confession to a Priest, think that they may wype their mouth and say, I did it not. […] they neuer sighe vnto god, they neuer return to themselues, but heape sinnes vpon sinnes17”. Angelo never does “sighe vnto god” or “return” to himself according to Calvin because he has confessed to a priest, here a false one at that. In fact, his last lines run: “I crave death more willingly than mercy;/’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it” (5.1.474-475).
12Finally, I do not think Angelo’s confession is a successful Calvinistic one because it does not reflect the more comforting aspects of predestination, namely that the world is divided into the elect and the damned and that there is nothing an individual can do to change his status. One is either elect or not. This is supposed to be calming because no matter what sin one commits, if he is part of the elect, he will be forgiven and go to Heaven. Here, Angelo finds himself damned because he does not think that he is worthy of forgiveness, regardless of if he confesses or not. The truth is that Angelo cannot see past his sins to ask sincerely for forgiveness, not from the Duke or from God. And, in any event, his fear violates the comforting aspects of predestination.
13Thomas Ailesbury in his 1657 A Treatise of the Confession of Sinne says, “particular reckonings for every sin an heavy load to the Conscience, and without express warranty from God, imply[s] difficulty, and impossibility, […] tending to desperation18”. Angelo and Red Cross Knight alike, at least in canto 9 of the first book of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene, are floundering in hopeless despair and sin for which they cannot really confess; they cannot bring themselves to finish confession by asking for pardon, serving penance, and thus ultimately gaining absolution. This, of course, is not to suggest that Calvinists did not experience despair. Calvin indeed viewed despair as a necessary part of confession and reconciliation, but I am arguing that Angelo has not successfully completed the act; he remains estranged from himself, from God, and from the community.
14The main problem Angelo faces is that overwhelmingly, his confession has failed. Thus, it should not be surprising to add that his penance may also never do him any good, not that Protestant Church doctrine requires penance, for as Richard Hooker makes clear in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1548), “pardon is in itself a full absolute and perfect discharge for revengeful punishments19”. However, it can be argued that Angelo certainly receives a vengeful punishment from the Duke: his forced marriage to Mariana. As the Duke commands,
Go, take her hence, and marry her instantly.
Do you the office, friar; which consummate,
Return him here again… (5.1.375-377).
Angelo cannot expect absolution until after his penance is served, which should not be the case if this is Protestant confession of all kinds; rather, Angelo should experience a full reconciliation immediately, rather than after the play is complete, in some possible future, in some magical act 6 where Angelo and Mariana come to love and respect each other as they were meant to all along.
15Due to the end of the play coming where it does, it is even quite possible that Angelo’s reconciliation with God, himself, and his community may never actually be achieved. Phoebe S. Spinrad argues, “this, then, is why Angelo […] must not be allowed to die. Theologically, [he] ha[s] not achieved repentance20”. Spinrad is not the only critic to notice the failure of Angelo’s confession; Knoppers has also noted it, writing, “Angelo’s confession reveals the limits of the shaming rituals of church and state. While confessing his guilt, he does not move beyond a justice of measure for measure to hope for pardon. […] Angelo asks only for death21”. Pope has similarly stated that Angelo “is the epitome of all the men who ‘have nothing in their mouths but the law, the law: and Justice, Justice in the meantime forgetting that justice always shakes hands with her sister mercy22’”.
16To critics such as Seiden, Angelo’s confession seems godlike in its bravery. In the final judgment scene, the Duke forces Angelo to judge his own case, and when Angelo finds himself trapped, he judges himself as mercilessly as he once judged Claudio. For his own sins, Angelo condemns himself to death, exclaiming,
let my trial be mine own confession.
Immediate sentence, then, and sequent death,
Is all the grace I beg (5.1.370-372).
This death sentence should be satisfying to Angelo, who is as Seiden reminds us, an “absolutist who refuses to make deals, even with himself23”. Angelo’s relentless black or white mentality most especially when it is applied to his own corrupt behavior is, in a way, heroic because bravery of this kind is always impressive. Angelo knows that he must sentence himself with death, and to his credit, he refuses to give himself less than what he has dealt out. Seiden asks, “who could fail to admire […] a man who, like a god, refuses to hear his own voice cry out, ‘Let me live’ and condemns himself to death24”.
17However, Seiden does allow for a dissenting view, suggesting that some may interpret Angelo’s bravery as weakness. His guilt-ridden, self-despising sickness actually makes him a sadist, “who turns against himself, and seeks oblivion25”. Critics like Spinrad warn: “Before we applaud Angelo’s self-judgment […] we must remember that a ‘penitent heart’ does not refuse grace, mercy, or a chance to amend. This is not acceptance of death, but something uglier: despair26.” But ultimately Spinrad doesn’t fully address Angelo’s most serious error in this case, the egotistical sin of despair. Despair might be viewed as egotistical because, in effect, sinners are challenging God’s power. Egotists who despair believe that their sins are so unforgivable that not even God, in his infinite mercy has the power or ability to forgive them should they confess. Therefore, they offer no sincere confession or repentance at all. Instead, wrapped in their shroud of sin and guilt, they contemplate suicide as their only way out of the pain of living with their guilt, when all they had to do was seek forgiveness. Angelo’s demanding death in the final scene is tantamount to suicide. His longing for death is neither godlike nor heroic. Seeking oblivion is not a hero’s death at all, but a coward’s. As Spinrad points out, there is “no room in his world for the mixed creature who can sin, repent, and sin and repent again”. Thus, Angelo “convicts himself utterly, leaving no room for a repentance that he, as a reprobate, cannot expect to be granted27”.
18In order to understand better what might be happening in Angelo’s mind just after his confession, applying Jacques Lacan’s theory of the mirror stage can be very helpful. It is through the audience on stage acting as a mirror that Angelo is able to see, for the first time perhaps, his repressed libido writ large, his id run amok, an identity that he has been denying and trying to repress. As Barton has observed: “Beneath the sober and inflexible deportment of the lawgiver lurks a frustrated sensualist28.” The self-obliterating desire Angelo feels at the end of the play as he stands humiliated and exposed before the people of Vienna is thus a result of his interactions in the mirror stage, seeing himself not as he’d like to appear, but as he really is. Even as the mirror confirms selfhood and “symbolizes the mental permanence of the I, […] it prefigures its alienating destination29”. In seeing himself thusly fragmented, his insides in open conflict with his outsides, Walter Benjamin’s analysis of the actor in front of the camera also becomes significant: Angelo too experiences a “feeling of strangeness… basically the same kind of estrangement felt before one’s own image in a mirror30”. This alienation is the result of failing to connect with self; in this case, the self that Angelo has been struggling to hide. Thus, he is unable to move forward as an integrated, forgiven penitent.
19But, how exactly does Isabella moves from wanting “Justice, Justice, Justice, Justice!” (5.1.26) to begging for Angelo’s life at the end of the scene? Bernthal justifies Vincentio’s deceptive behavior on the grounds that he is acting “for the moral benefit of Isabella’s spiritual growth, forcing her to truly recognize the value of mercy by forcing her to act on her stated beliefs31”. In other words, Isabella must experience pain during the trial scene if she is to grow spiritually. Thus, according to Seiden, “Whether as a fatherly pedagogue or as a sadist, Vencentio seems to be working on Isabella32.” It has been argued that the Duke is trying to break Isabella free of her narrow notions of justice, that only a changed Isabella can find it in her heart to judge Angelo’s case with the sympathy she has earlier denied her own brother. And yet, Seiden is at a loss to account for the change he notes in Isabella: “How or why Isabella makes the transition from cruelty to compassion it is not easy to say33.” Black foresees the transition when Isabella joins forces with Mariana: “It is an act of self-conquest (and a great stage gesture) when Isabella falls on her knees. She does more than kneel, however. […] Isabella goes the second mile to speak on Angelo’s behalf34.” In kneeling in public with Mariana, Isabella, having formerly cried out for “Justice! Justice! Justice!” (5.1.26), can now sincerely attest, “My brother had but justice” (5.1.446). Pope, in viewing the same scene, reads Isabella allegorically, as a Christ figure. Isabella’s act “is not natural; it is not […] even reasonable: it is sheer, reckless forgiveness of the kind Christ advocates in the Sermon on the Mount35”.
20After Isabella’s false confession about having slept with Angelo, the Duke has her removed from the scene, only to recall her for Angelo’s confession of guilt. Because the Duke is trying to cause a spiritual growth in Isabella, and in order for her to change, she needs to see Angelo confess, if she too is to acknowledge that she has sinned, though to an obviously lesser degree. Her worst sin has been to seek blind justice, without tempering it. However, what happens next in the play is not that Isabella offers a true public confession like Angelo before her. And yet she has changed after Angelo’s confession as seen when she is able to plead on his behalf. She is almost as Barton claims, “a different person […] from the terrified virgin who turned on Claudio like a Fury when he ventured to suggest that death might be worse than an enforced loss of chastity36”. It seems that Isabella must have had an internal experience which we, as the audience, are not privy to. This is an atypical moment in Shakespeare, I might point out, who often avoids subtext, preferring instead to have his characters actually speak aloud what they privately think. Isabella has experienced “the true inward conversion of the heart,” as Hooker calls it37, which allows her to forgive Angelo in the same way that she has been forgiven. Like Pope, I feel her forgiveness to be almost Christ-like, all encompassing, almost reckless, and without any conditions attached.
21Let’s look at the inner workings of Isabella’s confession a little more closely to address the ways in which aligning with Mariana affects her. To begin with, it is the Duke as friar who first convinces Isabella to tell such a humiliating lie about herself in public. It is hard to imagine her taking such steps were the advice to come from anyone other than her religious superior. Knoppers tells us: “The Duke persuades Isabella to follow his directions by repeatedly reassuring her that she will not be dishonored38.” Therefore, outside the city gates of Vienna, Isabella takes up the position of kneeling penitent, as she asks the Duke to “vail” his regard “upon a wrong’d – I would fain have said maid” (5.1.20-21). In this utterance “the chaste […] Isabella plays the role of the defiled woman39”. Significantly, Mariana is placed in a similarly compromising position as she confesses that she is “neither maid, widow, nor wife” (5.1.177-178); and later, “My lord, I do confess I ne’er was married,/And I confess besides I am no maid” (5.1.184-185). Thus, the two women become joined in their actions and utterances. Though, of course, we must remember that Isabella has not literally lost her virginity, as Knoppers says, “in the shame culture the display is as important as the reality40”. I would argue that in fact, the display is even more significant because it is Isabella’s performance of guilt that is ultimately responsible for her reformation.
22As Diehl makes clear, Isabella’s experience of public humiliation is profound, but it is that which enables her “to identify and empathize with Mariana41”. This requires Isabella to step into Mariana’s place, feeling her “grief and shame” (5.1.99). Thus, as Diehl says, Isabella declares “herself a ‘fallen’ woman and is treated as an object of scorn and approbation”. This, of course, reverses the earlier physical substitution of Mariana for Isabella in the bed-trick. It is through the Duke’s casting that Isabella comes to recognize “that she, like the woman she plays, is vulnerable, conflicted, passionate, imperfect, and at risk42”. Moreover, it is the recognition of her position that enables Isabella to join Mariana on her knees, pleading for Angelo’s life. Thus, it is the physical and emotional enacting the role of “fallen” woman more than anything else, which causes the change in Isabella.
23The entirety of Mariana’s character becomes more significant than previously imagined when viewed in this light. She is more than Angelo’s jilted fiancé, just as she is more than a convenient substitution so that Isabella does not have to be defiled by Angelo during the seduction scene in the garden. Some direct comparisons may help make this clearer. In meeting Angelo, instead of Isabella, Mariana completely puts herself in another’s place. She physically substitutes her body for Isabella’s. To Black, this indicates that Mariana is the first character to prove that morality is more than merely making “splendid pronouncements43”. More than this, she also espouses forgiveness and love throughout the final judgment scene. Despite all that Angelo has done to her over the last five years, Mariana still loves him and forgives him for his transgressions, though he lacks the moral conviction to ask her to do it. Also, it is only through the efforts of Mariana that Angelo might one day gain reconciliation, via the penance of his marriage to her, which is perhaps why the Duke tells Angels, “Look that you love your wife: her worth, worth yours” (5.1.495).
24And finally, it is only by enacting Mariana’s role that Isabella comes to acknowledge the error of her ways. In fact, one could argue that Isabella is even further humiliated because she pleads for a man more worthy of her contempt than her mercy; she kneels to plead for a man who has tried to get her to submit to be raped and who, she thinks, has killed her brother. What’s more, the only way Isabella’s shame is stemmed is when the Duke restores her honor in marriage to him: “for your lovely sake,” he says, “Give me your hand and say you will be mine” (5.1.489-490). What better way for the Duke to reinstate her reputation, and it bears pointing out, “appropriate that honor” at the same time44?
25As several feminist scholars have noted, it seems that Isabella doesn’t particularly want to comply when the Duke proposes marriage to him as her “reward”. In fact, she is stoically silent in response to the supposed words of love quoted above and well as when the Duke entreats her several lines later,
Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good;
Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline,
What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine (5.1.531-534).
And, who can blame the stunned-silent girl? As Barton reminds us, “There have been no love passages of even the shyest and most inarticulate kind between them45” until this moment.
26Thus, Toby Widdicombe poses a useful question: “How is the reader to assess [Isabella’s] silence? Does she acknowledge agreement by giving the Duke her hand? Does she shake her head in refusal46?” The truth is that Shakespeare himself goes strangely silent at this point, leaving readers nothing to go on: he refuses to give us any lines from Isabella and even neglects to supply stage directions which might indicate her feelings. Of course, another way to view her silence is as a profound statement. As Widdicombe writes: “Indeed, in this case, doing nothing is tantamount in itself to an act47.” Without saying a word, Isabella clearly demonstrates that she would prefer to stay true to her course and become a nun. I would argue that the Duke’s forcing Isabella to marry him is not that far from Angelo’s earlier coercion to accept rape as a fair trade for her brother’s life. It certainly isn’t taking what Isabella’s wants into consideration.
27In this analysis, we must not forget another important point. That is, it is really the rehearsal, the performance of Isabella’s false confession that compels her to self-knowledge, though this is, of course, also brought on in part by Mariana’s example. The theatrics of the situation work their magic on Isabella, and it is through this piece of theater that Isabella becomes reformed. It is tempting at this point to speculate if this in any way reflects Shakespeare’s ideas about the role of theatre. For certain, the final trial scene is more dramatic, is a better piece of theatre, if Isabella’s change remains uncertain. We, as audience, do not know if she will be able to plead for Angelo when Mariana begs her to do so. And, it should be noted that the drama is intensified when Mariana has to ask several times thusly,
sweet Isabel, take my part;
Lend me your knees…
Isabel!
Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;
[…]
O Isabel! Will you not lend a knee? (5.1.428, 434-435, 440).
Further, Shakespeare might be testing the audience’s convictions through Isabella. In a way, Shakespeare may be asking the audience if they have learned anything from Mariana about the nature of justice and mercy. Shakespeare may be asking the audience to realize that they too, like Isabella, still want only narrow justice for Angelo, a death for a death, “Measure still for Measure” (5.1.409). We too have only a blind adherence to strict definitions of justice. Another way to look at Isabella’s falling to her knees is that she is enacting a kind of penance for her sins: her cruelty, her blind justice, and her lie. She begs for Angelo’s life because that is the penance she must complete in order to reconcile fully to God, herself, and her community.
28But there is yet a final way to look at the scene and that is in terms of final outcomes. Although Isabella’s confession is a false one, it nevertheless leads her to true absolution and reconciliation. Unlike Angelo’s confession, which is a failed attempt to gain absolution, held back by his egotistical sin of despair, Isabella truly does seek forgiveness by this point. It is gained through her marriage to the Duke, which will make her a prominent public figure, whereas Angelo must sneak away to gain, hopefully, at some point in the future, reconciliation through his marriage to Mariana. Strictly based on results, Isabella undergoes the more positive experience for which there are more positive consequences. Although marriage to the Duke may not be exactly what Isabella has in mind, it offers many benefits: not only is Isabella’s reputation fully exonerated, her virtue completely restored, but she has also made a considerable jump in social status. She will become not only a living example of mercy, but also the wife of the most powerful man in Vienna. Her reconciliation to the community is complete. On the other hand, Angelo, one senses, has not even begun his long process of reconciliation. He is trapped into confessing, cannot bring himself to ask for forgiveness, and yet he is supposedly forgiven for his sins, as the Duke indicates with: “Well, Angelo, your evil quits you well” (5.1.496). But has Angelo accepted this or is he still wrapped up in his own prison of guilt? Overwhelmingly, I would argue that Angelo remains imprisoned, which is one reason why the Duke tells him to look to Mariana. It is only through Angelo’s marriage that he might one day be fully reconciled – but it is uncertain if he ever will, in fact, complete his penance. Thus, it seems that ultimately Isabella’s false and theatrical confession is much more positive than Angelo’s true confession.
29Why would Shakespeare insist on making Isabella’s false confession the more spiritually beneficial experience? Let’s explore, at least briefly, the position of theatre during the Reformation. There were predominately two opinions on theatre during the period, pro-theatrical and anti-theatrical. While it is tempting to place all Puritans in the anti-theatrical camp, writers like Jeffrey Knapp, Peter Collinson, and Paul Whitfield White remind us that the period was not quite so reductive. As White has shown, “early English reformers, encouraged and at times commissioned by the state, engaged drama as a potent weapon of religious propaganda”. Thus from the 1530s onward, “playwrights and players, both amateur and professional, contributed to the formation of an emerging Protestant culture48”. As Knapp writes, this means that “a surprising number of writers throughout the English Renaissance depicted plays as godly enterprises49”. Moreover, Knapp indicates that Shakespeare “appears to believe that his audience can draw spiritual strength from their experiences of the theatre50”.
30But not everyone during Shakespeare’s time agreed. Anti-theatricalists deplored the theatre for several reasons, many of which are too complex to explore at length in this investigation, so I will briefly address two. The first is that anti-theatricalists believed the theatre was taking over the role of the church. As Knapp indicates, “some playgoers thoughts plays were not only more entertaining than sermons but even ‘as good as sermons’ were”. In the words of the clergyman John Northbrokke, writing in 1577, people “shame not to say and affirm openly, […] that they learn as much or more at a Play, then they do at God’s word preached51”. Thus, as Knapp shows, “some Elizabethans came to prefer the theatre to the established church because they believed the player had subsumed the preacher’s role52”. Obviously this was upsetting to anti-theatricalists who privileged religious preaching over bawdy performance.
31This leads to the second reason: Anti-theatricalists thought that the spectacle of the theatre too closely recalled the use of ritual and performance in the Catholic Church; it was all too Roman Catholic in appearance. And yet, to reformers like Hooker, who always saw the Church of England more closely allied to the Roman Catholic Church than other reformers, the spectacle of the church was necessary. This is because for Hooker, “it was impossible to separate the pure and the impure and in any case counter-productive to try, because the basic goal of conformity was to draw unbelievers into the machinery of a necessary gradual conversion53”. To Knapp therefore, “the spectacles of the theatre are presented as better than demystifying: they are made to seem sacramental54”. This may give some students pause; what are we to make of the more bawdy side of theatre? Measure for Measure is very much a play about fornication, after all. What self-respecting Puritan would stomach a play with such a focus? Knapp answers, “play after play suggested that the pretense of vice would better attract sinners to their possible conversion55”.
32 Measure for Measure is full of crowd-pleasing deceits in its continual reliance on physical substitution, in specific, the bed-trick and the decoy head of Claudio. These spectacles were designed to delight and entertain the audience. Also, the play presents several instances of vice to attract sinners. Characters commit fornication, engage in prostitution, and Angelo makes an indecent proposal to a nun. With such a program, it would be easy to draw sinners into the theatre, with the thinking that the more sinful the characters, the more the sinful audience can see themselves in them, and the more likely they would be to seek out “right action”. In fact, according to Russ McDonald, between the years 1550 and 1600, “more than one in five brides – including Shakespeare’s wife – were pregnant at the altar56”. The actual, real life ratio was probably much higher, with the understanding that the frequency of pre-marital sexual activity was even higher than that. What’s more, the play also depicts the duplicity of the “self-righteous” Puritan, which we see enacted in the deeply hypocritical, but outwardly pious Angelo. And, finally, the play attempts to offer an overall moral message with restorative marriages, even-handed punishments for sincere confessions, and moral lessons learned. Though, of course, in the case of Angelo, not all of these apply.
33Thus, as Diehl points out, Measure for Measure is both “a product of the Protestant Reformation – a reformed drama – and a producer of Protestant habits of thought – a reforming drama57”. That is, Isabella’s confession is morally reparative precisely because it is theatrical. It is a performance, a lie, yet it leads Isabella to the truth about her behavior as well as a successful reconciliation with herself, God, and her community because theatre itself can clearly be morally instructive to its audiences, both those on and off stage.
Notes de bas de page
1Seiden M., Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, Washington, The Catholic University of America Press, 1990, p. 146.
2Bernthal C., “Staging Justice: James I and the Trial Scenes of Measure for Measure,” SEL: 1500-1900, vol. 32, n° 2, 1992, p. 247-270, p. 259.
3Ibid., p. 259..
4Seiden, Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, op. cit., p. 142.
5Pope E. M., “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” in Aspects of Shakespeare’s ‘Problem Plays’: Articles Reprinted from Shakespeare Survey, Kenneth Muir and Stanley Wells (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 57-76, p. 62.
6Perkins W., Treatise of Christian Equity and Moderation, 1604; reprint in Pope Elizabeth Marie, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 69.
7Barton A., “Measure for Measure,” in The Riverside Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd edition,. G. Blackmore Evans and J. J. M. Tobin (ed.), Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p. 579-583, p. 580.
8Knoppers Lunger L., “(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” ELR, vol. 23, n° 3, September 1993, p. 450-471, p. 466.
9Seiden M., Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, op. cit., p. 55.
10Black J., “The Unfolding of ‘Measure for Measure’,” in Aspects of Shakespeare’s “Problem Plays”: Articles Reprinted from Shakespeare Survey, op. cit., p. 77-86, p. 85.
11Seiden M., Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, op. cit., p. 50.
12Barton A., “Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 580.
13Calvin J., Institutions of the Christian Religion, 1535; reprint in Diehl Huston, “‘Infinite Space’: Representation and Reformation in Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 49, n° 4, 1998, p. 393-410, p. ccii.
14A Memoriall of a Christian Life: Wherein Are Treated All Such Things, As Appertaine Vnto a Christian to Doe, From the Beginning of His Conuersion, Vntill the End of His Perfection: Deuived into Seaven Treatises, the Particulers Whereof Are Noted in the Page Following, Roven, George Loyselet, 1586, p. 156-157.
15Koehler W. J., Counseling and Confession: The Role of Confession and Absolution in Pastoral Counseling, St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1982, p. 42.
16Luther M., Large Catechism: Brief Exhoration to Conession, 1520; reprint in Koehler Walter J., Counseling and Confession: The Role of Confession and Absolution in Pastoral Counseling, St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1982, p. 43.
17Institutions of the Christian Religion, p. ccvii-ccviii.
18Ailesbury T., A Treatise of the Confession of Sinne, and Chiefly As It Is Made Unto the Priests and Ministers of the Gosspel. Together With the Power of the Keys, and of Absolution, London, F.G., 1657, p. A5.
19Hooker R., Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker With an Account of His Life and Death By Isaac Walton, Rev. John Kebel (ed.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888, p. 60.
20Spinrad P. S., “Measure for Measure and the Art of Not Dying,” in William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Harold Bloom (ed.), New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1987, p. 111-130, p. 129.
21Knoppers, “(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” op. cit., p. 467.
22Pope, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 67.
23Seiden, Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, op. cit., p. 137.
24Ibid., p. 135.
25Ibid., p. 134.
26Spinrad, “Measure for Measure and the Art of Not Dying,” p. 124.
27Ibid.
28Barton, “Measure for Measure,” p. 580.
29Lacan J., “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, David Richter (ed.), Boston, Bedford, 2007, p. 1123-1128, p. 1124.
30Benjamin W., “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, David Richter (ed.), Boston, Bedford, 2007, 1233-1249, p. 1241.
31Bernthal, “Staging Justice: James I and the Trial Scenes of Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 254.
32Seiden, Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry, op. cit., p. 136.
33Ibid., p. 142.
34Black, “The Unfolding of ‘Measure for Measure’,” op. cit., p. 84.
35Pope, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 70.
36Barton, “Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 580.
37Hooker R., Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. Richard Hooker With an Account of His Life and Death By Isaac Walton, op. cit., p. 73.
38“(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” p. 465.
39Diehl, “‘Infinite Space’: Representation and Reformation in Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 406.
40Knoppers, “(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” p. 466.
41Diehl, “‘Infinite Space’: Representation and Reformation in Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 406.
42Ibid., p. 406.
43Black, “The Unfolding of Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 82.
44Knoppers, “(En)gendering Shame: Measure for Measure and the Spectacles of Power,” op. cit., p. 470.
45Barton, “Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 582.
46Widdicombe T., Simply Shakespeare, New York, Longman Publishers, 2002, p. 17.
47Ibid.
48Whitfield White P., “Introduction,” in Theatre and the Reformation: Protestantism, Patronage, and Playing in Tudor England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 1-11, p. 3.
49Knapp J., Shakespeare’s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theatre in Renaissance England, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 2.
50Knapp, op. cit., p. 119.
51Reprint in ibid., p. 5.
52Ibid., p. 118.
53Ibid., p. 20.
54Ibid., p. 119.
55Ibid., p. 20.
56McDonald R., The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: an Introduction with Documents, Boston, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001, p. 272.
57Diehl, “‘Infinite Space’: Representation and Reformation in Measure for Measure,” op. cit., p. 1.
Auteur
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Denise Tischler Millstein
The Assistant Professor of 19th-Century British Literature at Stephen F. Austin State University. Her other research areas include gender, sexuality, and queer studies, the Gothic, and the figure of the vampire. Recently she edited the collection, Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment, which included her essay “George Eliot’s Felix Holt, the Radical and Byronic Secrets.” She has also published: “The Failed Quest for ‘Anti-Self-Consciousness’: Angel, Spike, and Roderick Usher,” found in Buffy Meets the Academy: Essays on the Episodes and Scripts as Texts, “The Effects of Fame on Lord Byron’s Canon,” which is contained in the collection Film and Television Stardom, and “Lord Byron and George Eliot: Embracing National Identity in Daniel Deronda,” published in Forum: The University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts. Dr. Millstein lives in Nacogdoches, TX, USA, with her husband Isaac.
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