Measure for Measure, in its vein of thought and complexion of
character, is the deepest of Shakespeare's comedies,--deeper even than
some of his tragedies. The foundation principles of ethics are here
explored far as the plummet of thought can sound; the subtleties and
intricacies of the human heart are searched with an insight which the
sharpest and most inquisitive criticism may strive in vain to follow.
The mind almost loses itself in attempting to trace out through their
course the various and complicated lines of reflection here suggested.
* * * * *
We have no authentic contemporary notice of the play whatever, till it
appeared in the folio of 1623. I say _authentic_ notice; because the
item which, some years ago, Mr. Peter Cunningham claimed to have found
among some old records preserved at Somerset House, and which makes
the play to have been acted at Court in December, 1604, has been
lately set aside as a fabrication. Though printed much better than
_All's Well that Ends Well_, still the text set forth in the folio
gives us but too much cause to regret the lack of earlier copies;
there being several passages that are, to all appearance, incurably
defective or corrupt.
The strongly-marked peculiarities of the piece in language, cast of
thought, and moral temper, have invested it with great psychological
interest, and bred a strange desire among critics to connect it in
some way with the author's mental history,--with some supposed crisis
in his feelings and experience. Hence the probable date of the writing
was for a long time argued more strenuously than the subject would
otherwise seem to justify; and, as often falls out in such cases, the
more the critics argued the point, the further they were from coming
to an agreement. And, in truth, the plain matter-of-fact critics have
here succeeded much better in the work than their more philosophical
brethren; which aptly shows how little the brightest speculation can
do in questions properly falling within the domain of facts.
In default of other data, the critics in question based their
arguments upon certain probable allusions to contemporary matters;
especially on those passages which express the Duke's fondness for
"the life remov'd," and his aversion to being greeted by crowds of
people. Chalmers brought forward also the very pertinent fact of a
long-sleeping statute having been revived in 1604, which punished with
death all divorced or divorcing persons who married again while their
former husbands or wives were living. This circumstance, he thinks,
might well have suggested what is said by the Duke:
"We have strict statutes and most biting laws,--
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds,--
Which for this fourteen years we have let sleep;
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave,
That goes not out to prey."
Chalmers had the sagacity to discover also a sort of portrait-like
resemblance in the Duke to King James the First. As the King was
indeed a much better theologian than statesman or ruler, the fact of
the Duke's appearing rather more at home in the cowl and hood than in
his ducal robes certainly lends some colour to this discovery.
The King's unamiable repugnance to being gazed upon by throngs of
admiring subjects is thus spoken of by a contemporary writer: "In his
public appearance, especially in his sports, the accesses of the
people made him so impatient, that he often dispersed them with
frowns, that we may not say, with curses." And his churlish bearing
towards the crowds which, prompted by eager loyalty, flocked forth to
hail his accession, is noted by several historians. But he was a
pretty free encourager of the Drama, as well as of other liberal
preparations; and, with those who had tasted, or who sought, his
patronage, it was natural that these symptoms of weakness should pass
for tokens of a wise superiority to the dainties of popular applause.
All which renders it not unlikely that the Poet may have had an eye to
the King in the passages cited by Malone in support of his conjecture:
"I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it."
"So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;
Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive: and even so
The general, subject to a well-wish'd king,
Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love
Must needs appear offence."
The allusion here being granted, Malone's inference, that the play was
made soon after the King's accession, and before the effect of his
unlooked-for austerity on this score had spent itself, was natural
enough. Nor is the conjecture of Ulrici and others without weight,
"that Shakespeare was led to the composition of the play by the
rigoristic sentiments and arrogant virtue of the Puritans." And in
this view several points of the main action might have been aptly
suggested at the time in question: for the King had scarcely set foot
in England but he began to be worried by the importunities of that
remarkable people; who had been feeding upon the hope, that by the
sole exercise of his prerogative he would work through a radical
change in the constitution of the Church, and so bring her into
accordance with their ideas:--all this on the principle, of course,
that a minority however small, with the truth, was better than a
majority however large, without it.
The accession of King James to the English throne was in March, 1603.
So that the forecited arguments would conclude the writing of the play
to have been nearly synchronous with the revisal of _All's Well that
Ends Well_, and with the production of _King Lear_, perhaps also of
_Macbeth_; at least, within the same period of four or five years. The
characteristics of style and temper draw to the same conclusion as
regards the date of the writing.
* * * * *
There is no doubt that for some particulars in the plot and story of
_Measure for Measure_ the Poet was ultimately indebted to Cinthio, an
Italian novelist of the sixteenth century. The original story makes
the eighty-fifth in his _Hundred Tales_. A youth named Ludovico is
there overtaken in the crime of seduction: Juriste, a magistrate
highly reputed for wisdom and justice, passes sentence of death upon
him; and Ludovico's sister, a virgin of rare gifts and graces, goes to
pleading for his life. Her beauty and eloquence have the same effect
on Juriste as Isabella's on Angelo. His proposals are rejected with
scorn and horror; but the lady, overcome by the pathetic entreaties of
her brother, at last yields to them under a solemn promise of
marriage. His object being gained, the wicked man then commits a
double vow-breach, neither marrying the sister nor sparing the
brother. She appeals to the Emperor, by whom Juriste is forced to
marry her, and then sentenced to death; but is finally pardoned at the
lady's suit, who is now as earnest and eloquent for her husband as
she had been for her brother. Her conduct touches him with remorse,
and at length proves as effective in reforming his character as it was
in redeeming his life.
As early as 1578, this tale was dramatized after a sort by George
Whetstone, and was published as _The History of Promos and Cassandra_.
Whetstone was a writer of learning and talent, but not such that even
the instructions of a Shakespeare could have made him capable of
dramatic excellence; and, as he had no such benefit, his performance
is insipid and worthless enough. The drama is in Two Parts, and is
written in verse, with alternate rhymes. In his conduct of the story
Whetstone varies somewhat from the original; as the following abstract
will show:
In the city of Julio, then under the rule of Corvinus, King of
Hungary, there was a law that for incontinence the man should suffer
death, and the woman be marked out for infamy by her dress. Through
the indulgence of magistrates, this law came to be little regarded.
The government falling at length into the hands of Lord Promos, he
revived the statute, and, a youth named Andrugio being convicted of
the fault in question, resolved to visit the penalties in their utmost
rigour upon both the parties. Andrugio had a sister of great virtue
and accomplishment, named Cassandra, who undertook to sue for his
life. Her good behaviour, great beauty, and "the sweet order of her
talk" wrought so far with the governor as to induce a short reprieve.
Being inflamed soon after with a criminal passion, he set down the
spoil of her honour as the ransom. She spurned his suit with
abhorrence. Unable, however, to resist the pleadings of her brother,
she at last yielded to the man's proposal, on condition of his
pardoning her brother and then marrying her. This he vowed to do; but,
his end once gained, instead of keeping his vow, he ordered the jailer
to present Cassandra with her brother's head. As the jailer knew what
the governor had done, he took the head of a felon just executed, and
set Andrugio at liberty. Cassandra, supposing the head to be her
brother's, was at the point to kill herself for grief, but spared
that stroke, to be avenged on the traitor. She devised to make her
case known to the King; who forthwith hastened to do justice on
Promos, ordering that, to repair the lady's honour, he should marry
her, and then, for his crime against the State, lose his head. No
sooner was Cassandra a wife than all her rhetoric of eye, tongue, and
action was tasked to procure the pardon of her husband; but the King,
tendering the public good more than hers, denied her suit. At length,
Andrugio, overcome by his sister's grief, made himself known; for he
had all the while been about the place in disguise; whereupon the
King, to honour the virtues of Cassandra, pardoned both him and
Promos.
In 1592, Whetstone published his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_,
containing a prose version of the same tale. It is observable that he
deviates from Cinthio in bringing Andrugio off alive; and as
Shakespeare does the same with Claudio, we may well conclude that he
drew directly from Whetstone, not from the original author. Beyond the
mere outline of the story, it does not appear that the Poet borrowed
any thing more than a few slight hints and casual expressions. And a
comparison of the two pieces would nowise reduce his claims; it being
not less creditable to have lifted the story out of the mire into such
a region of art and poetry than to have invented it. Then too, even as
regards the story, Shakespeare varies from Whetstone much more
materially than the latter does from Cinthio: representing the illicit
meeting of Claudio and Juliet as taking place under the shield of a
solemn betrothment; which very much lessens their fault, as marriage
bonds were already upon them; and proportionably heightens Angelo's
wickedness, as it brings on him the guilt of making the law
responsible for his own arbitrary rigour. But the main _original_
feature in the plot of _Measure for Measure_ is the part of Mariana,
which puts a new life into the whole, and purifies it almost into
another nature; as it prevents the soiling of Isabella's womanhood,
supplies an apt reason for the Duke's mysterious conduct, and yields a
pregnant motive for Angelo's pardon, in that his life is thereby bound
up with that of a wronged and innocent woman, whom his crimes are made
the occasion of restoring to her rights and happiness; so that her
virtue may be justly allowed to reprieve him from death.
In the comic parts of Whetstone's drama there is all the grossness of
_Measure for Measure_, without any thing that the utmost courtesy of
language can call wit or humour. So that, if the Poet here received no
help, neither can he have any excuse, from the workmanship of his
predecessor. But he probably saw that some such matter was required by
the scheme of the play and the laws of dramatic proportion. And as in
these parts the truth and character are all his own, so he can hardly
be blamed for not anticipating the delicacy or squeamishness of later
times, there being none such in the most refined audiences of his day;
while, again, his choice of a subject so ugly in itself is amply
screened from censure by the lessons of virtue and wisdom which he
used it as an opportunity for delivering. To have trained and taught a
barbarous tale of cruelty and lust into such a fruitage of poetry and
humanity, may well offset whatever of offence there may be in the play
to modern taste.
* * * * *
I have already referred to certain characteristics of style and temper
which this play shares with several others probably written about the
same time, and which, as before observed, have been thought to mark
some crisis in the Poet's life. It cannot well be denied that the
plays in question have something of a peculiar spirit, which might
aptly suggest that some passage of bitter experience must have turned
the milk of his genius for a time into gall, and put him upon a course
of harsh and indignant thought. The point is well stated by Hallam:
"There seems to have been a period of Shakespeare's life when his heart was
ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own conscience:
the memory of hours misspent, the pang of affection misplaced or
unrequited, the experience of man's worser nature, which intercourse
with ill-chosen associates peculiarly teaches,--these, as they sank
down into the depths of his great mind, seem not only to have inspired
into it the conception of Lear and Timon, but that of one primary
character, the censurer of mankind."[21] And Verplanck speaks in a
similar strain of "that portion of the author's life which was
memorable for the production of the additions to the original
_Hamlet_, with their melancholy wisdom; probably of _Timon_, with its
indignant and hearty scorn, and rebukes of the baseness of civilized
society; and above all of _Lear_, with its dark pictures of unmixed,
unmitigated guilt, and its terrible and prophet-like denunciations."
[21] "This type," continues the writer, "is first seen in the
philosophic melancholy of Jaques, gazing with an undiminished
serenity, and with a gayety of fancy, though not of manners, on
the follies of the world. It assumes a graver cast in the exiled
Duke of the same play, and one rather more severe in the Duke of
_Measure for Measure_. In all these, however, it is merely a
contemplative philosophy. In Hamlet this is mingled with the
impulses of a perturbed heart under the pressure of
extraordinary circumstances: it shines no longer, as in the
former characters, with a steady light, but plays in fitful
coruscations amid feigned gayety and extravagance. In Lear, it
is the flash of sudden inspiration across the incongruous
imagery of madness; in Timon, it is obscured by the
exaggerations of misanthropy."
These words certainly carry much weight, and may go far to warrant the
belief of the writers, that the Poet was smitten with some rude shock
of fortune which untuned the melody of his soul, and wrenched his mind
from its once smooth and happy course, causing it to recoil upon
itself and brood over its own thoughts. Yet there are considerable
difficulties besetting a theory of this kind. For, in some other plays
referred by these critics to the same period, there is so much of the
Poet's gayest and happiest workmanship as must greatly embarrass if
not quite upset such a theory. But, whatever may have caused the
peculiar tone and the cast of thought in the forenamed plays, it is
pretty certain that the darkness was not permanent; the clear azure,
soft sunshine, and serene sweetness of _The Tempest_ and _The Winter's
Tale_ being unquestionably of a later date. And, surely, in the life
of so earnest and thoughtful a man as Shakespeare, there might well
be, nay, there must have been, times when, without any special
woundings or bruisings of fortune, his mind got fascinated by the
appalling mystery of evil that haunts our fallen nature.
That such darker hours, however occasioned, were more frequent at one
period of the Poet's life than at others, is indeed probable. And it
was equally natural that their coming should sometimes engage him in
heart-tugging and brain-sweating efforts to scrutinize the inscrutable
workings of human guilt, and thus stamp itself strongly upon the
offspring of his mind. Thus, without any other than the ordinary
progress of thoughtful spirits, we should naturally have a middle
period, when the early enthusiasm of hope had passed away, and before
the deeper, calmer, but not less cheerful tranquillity of resignation
had set in. For so it is apt to be in this life of ours: the angry
barkings of fortune, or what seem such, have their turn with us; "the
fretful fever and the stir unprofitable" work our souls full of
discord and perturbation; but after a while these things pass away,
and are followed by a more placid and genial time; the experienced
insufficiency of man for himself having charmed our wrestlings of
thought into repose, and our spirits having undergone the chastening
and subduing power of life's sterner discipline.
In some such passage, then, I should rather presume the unique
conception of _Measure for Measure_ to have been formed in the Poet's
mind. I say unique, because this is his only instance of comedy where
the wit seems to foam and sparkle up from a fountain of bitterness;
where even the humour is made pungent with sarcasm; and where the
poetry is marked with tragic austerity. In none of his plays does he
discover less of leaning upon pre-existing models, or a more manly
negligence, perhaps sometimes carried to excess, of those lighter
graces of manner which none but the greatest minds may safely
despise. His genius is here out in all its colossal individuality, and
he seems to have meant it should be so; as if he felt quite sure of
having now reached his mastership; so that henceforth, instead of
leaning on those who had gone before, he was to be himself a
leaning-place for those who should follow.
Accordingly the play abounds in fearless grapplings and strugglings of
mind with matters too hard to consist with much facility and
gracefulness of tongue. The thought is strong, and in its strength
careless of appearances, and seems rather wishing than fearing to have
its roughnesses seen: the style is rugged, irregular, abrupt,
sometimes running into an almost forbidding sternness, but everywhere
throbbing with life: often a whole page of meaning is condensed and
rammed into a clause or an image, so that the force thereof beats and
reverberates through the entire scene: with little of elaborate grace
or finish, we have bold, deep strokes, where the want of finer
softenings and shadings is more than made up by increased energy and
expressiveness; the words going right to the spot, and leaving none of
their work undone. Thus the workmanship is in a very uncommon degree
what I sometimes designate as _steep_, meaning thereby _hard to get to
the top of_. Hence it is perhaps, in part, that so many axioms and
"brief sententious precepts" of moral and practical wisdom from this
play have wrought themselves into the currency and familiarity of
household words, and live for instruction or comfort in the memory of
many who know nothing of their original source. As a strong instance
in point, take Isabella's meaty apothegm,--
"Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,--
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,--
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep; who, _with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal_."
Which means that, if the angels had our disposition to splenetic or
satirical mirth, the sight of our human arrogance strutting through
its absurd antics would cast them into such an ecstasy of ridicule,
that they would laugh themselves clean out of their immortality; this
celestial prerogative being quite incompatible with such ebullitions
of spleen.
* * * * *
Whether from the nature of the subject, or the mode of treating it, or
both, _Measure for Measure_ is generally regarded as one of the least
attractive, though most instructive, of Shakespeare's plays.
Coleridge, in those fragments of his critical lectures which now form
our best text-book of English criticism, says, "This play, which is
Shakespeare's throughout, is to me the most painful--rather say the
only painful--part of his genuine works." From this language,
sustained as it is by other high authorities, I probably should not
dissent; but when, in his _Table Talk_, he says that "Isabella herself
contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable," I can by no
means go along with him.
It would seem indeed as if undue fault had sometimes been found, not
so much with the play itself as with some of the persons, from trying
them by a moral standard which cannot be fairly applied to them, or
from not duly weighing all the circumstances, feelings, and motives
under which they are represented as acting. Thus Ulrici speaks of
Claudio as being guilty of seduction. Which is surely wide of the
mark; it being clear enough that, according to the usages then and
there established, he was, as he considered himself to be, virtually
married, though not admissible to all the rights of the married life.
Hence we have the Duke assuring Mariana that there would be no crime
in her meeting with Angelo, because he was her "husband on a
pre-contract." And it is well known that in ancient times the ceremony
of betrothment conferred the marriage tie, though not the nuptials, so
that the union of the parties was thenceforth firm in the eye of the
law itself. So again Hallam, speaking of Isabella: "One is disposed
to ask whether, if Claudio had been really executed, the spectator
would not have gone away with no great affection for her; and at least
we now feel that her reproaches against her miserable brother, when he
clings to life like a frail and guilty being, are too harsh." As to
the first branch of this indictment, I might have ventured to ask the
writer how his affection would have stood towards the heroine, if she
had yielded to Angelo's proposal. As to the second branch, though I do
indeed feel that Claudio were rather to be pitied than blamed,
whatever course he had taken in so terrible an alternative, yet the
conduct of his sister strikes me as every way creditable to her. Her
reproaches were indeed too harsh, if they sprang from want of love;
but such is evidently not the case. The truth is, she is in a very
hard struggle between affection and principle: she needs, and she
hopes, to have the strain upon her womanly fortitude lightened by the
manly fortitude of her brother; and her harshness of reproof discovers
the natural workings of a tender and deep affection, in an agony of
disappointment at being urged, by one for whom she would die, to an
act which she shrinks from with noble horror, and justly considers
worse than death. So that we here have the keen anguish of conflicting
feelings venting itself in a severity which, though unmerited, serves
to disclose the more impressively her nobleness of character.
* * * * *
Again, the same critic, referring to the part of Mariana as
indispensable to "a satisfactory termination" of the story, objects,
that "it is never explained how the Duke had become acquainted with
this secret, and, being acquainted with it, how he had preserved his
esteem and confidence in Angelo." But, surely, we are given to
understand at the outset that the Duke has not preserved the esteem
and confidence in question. In his first scene with Friar Thomas,
among his reasons for the action he has on foot, he makes special
mention of this one:
"Lord Angelo is precise;
_Stands at a guard with envy_; scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone: _hence shall we see,
If power change purpose, what our_ SEEMERS _be_."
Which clearly infers that his main purpose in assuming the disguise of
a monk is to unmask the deputy, and demonstrate to others what has
long been known to himself. And he throws out other hints of a belief
or suspicion that Angelo is angling for emolument or popularity, and
baiting his hook with great apparent strictness and sanctity of life;
thus putting on sheep's clothing, in order to play the wolf with more
safety and success. As to the secret concerning Mariana, it seems
enough that the Duke knows it, that the knowledge justifies his
distrust, and that when the time comes he uses it for a good purpose;
the earlier part of the play thus preparing quietly for what is to
follow, and the later explaining what went before. In truth, the Duke
is better able to understand the deputy's character than to persuade
others of it: this is one of his motives for the stratagem. And a man
of his wisdom, even if he have no available facts in the case, might
well suspect an austerity so theatrical as Angelo's to be rather an
art than a virtue: he could not well be ignorant that, when men are so
forward to air their graces and _make_ their light shine, they can
hardly be aiming at any glory but their own.
It is to be supposed, withal, that Angelo has been wont to set himself
up as an example of ghostly rectitude, and to reflect somewhat on the
laxity of the Duke's administration. These reproofs the Duke cannot
answer without laying himself open to the retort of being touched with
jealousy. Then too Angelo is nervously apprehensive of reproach; is
ever on the watch, and "making broad his phylacteries," lest malice
should spy some holes in his conduct; for such is the meaning of
"standing at a guard with envy": whereas "virtue is bold, and goodness
never fearful" in that kind. The Duke knows that such an ostentatious
strictness, however it may take with the multitude, is among the
proper symptoms of a bad conscience; that such high professions of
righteousness are seldom used but as a mask to cover some secret
delinquencies from the public eye. Angelo had entered into a solemn
engagement of marriage, his motive being the lady's wealth; her wealth
being lost, so that she could no longer hold him through his secret
sin of covetousness, he had cruelly deserted her; this great wrong he
had still more cruelly made use of to purchase a brighter semblance of
virtue, blasting her good name with alleged discoveries of crime, and
thus fattening his own reputation with the life-blood of his innocent
and helpless victim. Here was an act of extreme heartlessness and
turpitude, too bad to be believed of one so ensconced in solemn
plausibilities. The matter had come privately to the Duke's knowledge;
but his tongue was tied by the official delicacies of his position.
A certain class of offences had caused a law to be passed of such
overstrained severity that it broke down in the trial; so it fell into
disuse, and became a dead letter,--a perch to birds of prey, and not
their terror. From its extreme rigour, this law was extremely odious;
and, as is always the case with laws so hated, the attempt to enforce
it drew on a commensurate reaction of licentiousness; the law thus
stimulating the evil it was meant to repress,--a mistaken plaster
inflaming the sore. Angelo had been secretly guilty of a far worse sin
than the one this law was aimed against, but had managed to fence
himself about with practical impunity; nay, his crafty, sanctimonious
selfishness had even turned that sin to an increase of honour, and so
made it a basis of pride. As the slumbering law does not touch his
case, he is earnest to have it revived and put to work: so the Duke,
being somewhat divided between the pleadings of justice and mercy,
concludes to let him try his hand. In the discharge of his new office,
which he conceives his great moral strictness to have gained for him,
Angelo thinks to build his reputation still higher by striking at a
conspicuous object. In the prosecution of his scheme, he soon goes to
attempting a vastly deeper breach of the very law he is enforcing than
that of the man whom he has found obnoxious to its penalties.
Claudio's offence was done when the law was sleeping. Angelo has just
awakened it, yet he proceeds against Claudio as if the latter had
transgressed while the law was vigilant. Angelo's transgression has no
such excuse, since he has himself already given new life and force to
the law. Nevertheless he persists in his design, and hardens himself
to the point of resolving to "give his sensual race the rein." The
hitherto unsuspected evil within he is now fully aware of, but looks
it squarely in the face, and rushes headlong into the double crime of
committing in its worst form the sin and at the same time punishing
the lighter form of it with death in another. Thus it turns out that
"This outward-sainted deputy--
Whose settled visage and deliberate word
Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth emmew
As falcon doth the fowl--is yet a devil;
His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as Hell."
Yet Angelo is at first not so properly a hypocrite as a self-deceiver.
For it is very considerable that he wishes to be and sincerely thinks
he is, what he affects and appears to be; as is plain from his
consternation at the wickedness which opportunity awakens into
conscious action within him. He thus typifies that sort of men of whom
Bishop Butler says, "they try appearances upon themselves as well as
upon the world, and with at least as much success; and choose to
manage so as to make their own minds easy with their faults, which can
scarce be done without management, rather than to mend them." Even so
Angelo for self-ends imitates sanctity, and then gets taken in by his
own imitation. This "mystery of iniquity" locks him from all true
knowledge of himself. He must be worse before he will be better. The
refined hypocrisies which so elude his eye, and thus nurse his
self-righteous pride, must put on a grosser form, till he cannot
choose but see himself as he is. The secret devil within must blaze
out in a shape too palpable to be ignored. And so, as often happens
where the subtleties of self-deceit are thus cherished, he at length
proceeds a downright conscious hypocrite, this too of the deepest dye.
Angelo's original fault lay in forgetting or ignoring his own frailty.
As a natural consequence, his "darling sin is pride that apes
humility." And his conceit of virtue,--"my gravity, wherein (let no
man hear me) I take pride,"--while it keeps him from certain vices, is
itself a far greater vice than any it keeps him from; insomuch that
his interviews with Isabella may almost be said to _elevate_ him into
lust. They at least bring him to a just vision of his inward self. The
serpent charms of self-deceit which he has so hugged are now broken.
For even so--and how awful is the fact!--men often wound themselves so
deeply with medicines, that Providence has no way for them,
apparently, but to make wounds medicinal, or, as Hooker says, "to cure
by vice where virtue hath stricken." So indeed it must be where men
turn their virtues into food of spiritual pride; which is the hardest
of all sores to be cured, "inasmuch as that which rooteth out other
vices causeth this." And perhaps the array of low and loathsome vices,
which the Poet has clustered about Angelo in the persons of Lucio,
Pompey, and Mrs. Overdone, was necessary, to make us feel how
unspeakably worse than any or all of these is Angelo's pride of
virtue. It can hardly be needful to add, that in Angelo these fearful
traits of character are depicted with a truth and sternness of pencil,
such as could scarce have been achieved but in an age fruitful in
living examples of them.
* * * * *
The placing of Isabella, "a thing ensky'd and sainted," and who truly
_is_ all that Angelo seems, side by side with such a breathing,
shining mass of pitch, is one of those dramatic audacities wherein
none perhaps but a Shakespeare could safely indulge. Of her character
the most prolific hint that is given is what she says to the
disguised Duke, when he is urging her to fasten her ear on his
advisings touching the part of Mariana: "I have spirit to do any thing
that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit." That is, she cares
not what face her action may wear to the world, nor how much reproach
it may bring on her from others, if it will only leave her the
society, which she has never parted from, of a clean breast and a pure
conscience.
Called from the cloister, where she is on the point of taking the veil
of earthly renouncement, to plead for her brother's life, she comes
forth a saintly anchoress, clad in the austerest sweetness of
womanhood, to throw the light of her virgin soul upon the dark,
loathsome scenes and characters around her. With great strength of
intellect and depth of feeling she unites an equal power of
imagination, the whole being pervaded, quickened, and guided by a
still, intense religious enthusiasm. And because her virtue is
securely rooted and grounded in religion, therefore she never thinks
of it as her own, but only as a gift from the Being whom she adores,
and who is her only hope for the keeping of what she has. Which
suggests the fundamental point of contrast between her and Angelo,
whose virtue, if such it may be called, is nothing, nay, worse than
nothing, because it is a virtue of his own making, is without any
inspiration from the one Source of all true good, and so has no basis
but pride, which is itself a bubble. Accordingly her character appears
to me among the finest, in some respects the very finest, in
Shakespeare's matchless cabinet of female excellence.
The power and pathos with which she pleads for her brother are well
known. At first she is timid, distrustful of her powers, shrinking
with modest awe of the law's appointed organ; and she seems drawn
unawares into the heights of moral argument and the most
sweetly-breathing strains of Gospel wisdom. Much of what she says has
become domesticated wherever the English language is spoken, and would
long since have grown stale, if it were possible to crush the
freshness of immortal youth out of it. The dialogues between her and
Angelo are extremely subtile and suggestive on both sides, fraught
with meanings to reward the most searching ethical study, but which I
cannot stay to trace out, and which the closest criticism would fail
to exhaust. At the opening of their interview, she is in a struggle
between wishing and not wishing, and therefore not in a mood to "play
with reason and discourse." With her settled awe of purity, she cannot
but admit the law to be right, yet she sees not how, in the
circumstances, mercy can be wrong. At this thought her heart presently
kindles, her eloquence springs to work, and its tones grow deeper,
clearer, more penetrating, as point after point catches her mental
eye. Thenceforth it is a keen encounter of mind with mind; but on his
side it is the conscious logic of an adroit and practised lawyer, who
has full mastery of his case, and is prompt in all the turns of legal
ingenuity; while on her side it is the logic of nature's finest moral
instincts spontaneously using the forces of a quick, powerful, and
well-balanced intellect as their organ of expression. She perceives at
once how subtile and acute of apprehension he is; so, lest her speech
should have too much edge, she veils the matter in figures of a
somewhat enigmatical cast, because she knows that he will instantly
take the sense. Her instinctive knowledge of the human heart guides
her directly to his secret springs of action. With a tact that seems
like inspiration, she feels out his assailable points, and still
surprises and holds him with new and startling appeals to his
innermost feelings. At length, when, his wicked purpose being formed,
he goes to talking to her in riddles, she quickly understands him, but
thinks he is only testing her: her replies leave him in doubt whether
craft or innocence speaks in her: so she draws him on to speaking
plainer and plainer, till at last he makes a full and explicit avowal
of his inhuman baseness. He is especially caught, be it observed, "in
the strong toil" of her moral grace; at least he is pleased to think
so: and as he has been wont to pride himself on being a saint, so he
now takes refuge in the thought, "O cunning enemy, that to catch a
saint, with saints dost bait thy hook!"
It is not to be denied, indeed, that Isabella's chastity is rather too
demonstrative and self-pronounced; but this is because of the
unblushing and emphatic licentiousness of her social environment.
Goodness cannot remain undemonstrative amidst such a rank
demonstrativeness of its opposite: the necessity it is under of
fighting against so much and such aggressive evil forces it into
stress, and so into taking a full measure of itself. Isabella,
accordingly, is deeply conscious and mindful of her virtue, which
somewhat mars the beauty of it, I admit; but in the circumstances it
could not be otherwise: with such a strong stew of corruption boiling
and bubbling all about her, it was not possible that purity in her
case should retain that bland, unconscious repose which is indeed its
greatest charm. From the prevailing rampancy of vice, a certain air of
over-sternness and rigidity has wrought itself into her character,
displacing somewhat of its proper sweetness and amiability: but, in
the right view of things, this loss is well made up in that she is the
more an object of reverence; albeit I have to confess that she would
touch me rather more potently, if she had a little more of loveliness
and a little less of awfulness. And it is remarkable that even Lucio,
light-minded libertine as he is, whose familiar sin it is to jest with
maids, "tongue far from heart," cannot approach her, but that his
levity is at once awed into soberness, and he regards her as one "to
be talk'd with in sincerity, as with a saint."
* * * * *
The Duke has been rather hardly dealt with by critics.
Shakespeare--than whom it would not be easy to find a better judge of
what belongs to wisdom and goodness--seems to have meant him for a
wise and good man: yet he represents him as having rather more skill
and pleasure in strategical arts and roundabout ways than is
altogether in keeping with such a character. Some of his alleged
reasons for the action he goes about reflect no honour on him; but it
is observable that the sequel does not approve them to have been his
real ones: his conduct, as the action proceeds, infers better motives
than his speech offered at the beginning; which naturally suggests
that there may have been more of purpose than of truth in his
speaking. His first dialogue with Angelo is, no doubt, partly
ironical. A liberal, thoughtful, and merciful prince, but with more of
whim and caprice than exactly suits the dignity of his place, humanity
speaks richly from his lips; yet in his actions the philosopher and
the divine are better shown than the statesman and ruler. Therewithal
he seems to take a very questionable delight in moving about as an
unseen providence, by secret counsels leading the wicked designs of
others to safe and just results. It is indeed true, as Heraud observes
regarding him, that so "Divine Providence, while it deputes its
authority to the office-bearers of the world, is still present both
with them and it, and ever ready to punish the evil-doer": still I
doubt of its being just the thing for the world's office-bearers to
undertake the functions of Providence in that particular. Probably the
Duke should not be charged with a fanaticism of intrigue; but he comes
something nearer to it than befits a mind of the first order. Schlegel
thinks "he has more pleasure in overhearing his subjects than in
governing them in the usual way of princes"; and sets him down as an
exception to the proverb, "A cowl does not make a monk": and perhaps
his princely virtues are somewhat obscured by the disguise which so
completely transforms him into a monk. Whether he acts upon the wicked
principle with which that fraternity is so often reproached, or not,
it is pretty certain that some of his means can be justified by
nothing but the end. But perhaps, in the vast complexity of human
motives and affairs, a due exercise of fairness and candour will find
cause enough for ascribing to him the merit of honestly pursuing the
good and true according to the best lights he has. Hereabouts
Schlegel makes the following just remark: "Shakespeare, amidst the
rancour of religious parties, delights in painting monks, and always
represents their influence as beneficial; there being in his plays
none of the black and knavish specimens which an enthusiasm for
Protestantism, rather than poetical inspiration, has put some modern
poets upon delineating. He merely gives his monks an inclination to be
busy in the affairs of others, after renouncing the world for
themselves; though in respect of pious frauds he does not make them
very scrupulous."
As to the Duke's pardoning of Angelo, though Justice seems to cry out
against the act, yet in the premises it were still more unjust in him
to do otherwise; the deception he has practised on Angelo in
substituting Mariana having plainly bound him to the course he finally
takes in that matter. For the same power whereby he works through this
deception might easily have prevented Angelo's crime; and to punish
the offence after thus withholding the means of prevention were
clearly wrong: not to mention how his proceedings here involve an
innocent person; so that he ought to spare Angelo for her sake, if not
for his own. Coleridge indeed strongly reprehends this act, on the
ground that "cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be
forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented
of." But it seems to me hardly prudent, or becoming thus to set bounds
to the grace of repentance, or to say what amount of sin must
necessarily render a man incapable of being reformed. All which may in
some measure explain the Duke's severity to the smaller crime of
Lucio, after his clemency to the greater one of Angelo.
I must not leave the gentle Duke without remarking how, especially in
the earlier portions of the play, his tongue drops the very manna of
moral and meditative wisdom. His discourse in reconciling Claudio to
the quick approach of death condenses the marrow of all that
philosophy and divinity can urge, to wean us mortals from the "many
deceiving promises of life."
* * * * *
Lucio is one of those mixed characters, such as are often generated
amidst the refinements and pollutions of urban society, in whom low
and disgusting vices, and a frivolity still more offensive, are
blended with engaging manners and some manly sentiments. Thus he
appears a gentleman and a blackguard by turns; and, which is more, he
does really unite something of these seemingly-incompatible qualities.
With a true eye and a just respect for virtue in others, yet, so far
as we can see, he cares not a jot to have it in himself. And while his
wanton, waggish levity seems too much for any generous sentiment to
consist with, still he shows a strong and steady friendship for
Claudio, and a heart-felt reverence for Isabella; as if on purpose to
teach us that "the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together." And perhaps the seeming "snow-broth blood" of Angelo puts
him upon affecting a more frisky circulation than he really has. For
an overacted austerity is not the right way to win others out of a too
rollicking levity.
* * * * *
Dr. Johnson rather oddly remarks that "the comic scenes are natural
and pleasing": not that the remark is not true enough, but that it
appears something out of character in him. And if these scenes please,
it is not so much from any fund of mirthful exhilaration, or any
genial gushings of wit and humour, as for the remorseless, unsparing
freedom, not unmingled with touches of scorn, with which the
deformities of mankind are anatomized. The contrast between the
right-hearted, well-meaning Claudio, a generous spirit walled in with
overmuch infirmity, and Barnardine, a frightful petrification of
humanity, "careless, reckless and fearless of what is past, present,
or to come," is in the Poet's boldest manner.
Nevertheless the general current of things is far from musical, and
the issues greatly disappointing. The drowsy Justice which we expect
and wish to see awakened, and set in living harmony with Mercy,
apparently relapses at last into a deeper sleep than ever. Our loyalty
to Womanhood is not a little wounded by the humiliations to which poor
Mariana stoops, at the ghostly counsels of her spiritual guide, that
she may twine her life with that of the execrable hypocrite who has
wronged her sex so deeply. That, amid the general impunity, the mere
telling of some ridiculous lies to the disguised Duke about himself,
should draw down a disproportionate severity upon Lucio, the lively,
unprincipled, fantastic jester and wag, who might well be let pass as
a privileged character, makes the whole look more as if done in
mockery of justice than in honour of mercy. Except, indeed, the noble
unfolding of Isabella, scarce any thing turns out to our wish; nor are
we much pleased at seeing her diverted from the quiet tasks and holy
contemplations where her heart is so much at home; although, as
Gervinus observes, "she has that two-sided nature, the capacity to
enjoy the world, according to circumstances, or to dispense with it."
The title of this play is apt to give a wrong impression of its scope
and purpose. _Measure for Measure_ is itself equivocal; but the
subject-matter here fixes it to be taken in the sense, not of the old
Jewish proverb, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but of
the divine precept, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do
ye even so to them." Thus the title falls in with one of Portia's
appeals to Shylock, "We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth
teach us all to render the deeds of mercy." The moral centre of the
play properly stands in avoidance of extremes,--
"the golden mean and quiet flow
Of truths that soften hatred, temper strife."