Dusty:

The title perhaps suggests that the play is going to deal with some kind of severe justice or retribution meted out to Angelo, whose severity toward Claudio, and his hypocrisy, gets punished appropriately, measure for measure. Maybe also it suggests that justice needs to be “measured,” i.e., tempered with moderation.

The Duke’s charge to Angelo provides similar hints: the magistrate must deploy both “terror” and “love,” threaten punishment (“mortality”) but be ready to offer “mercy.”

The first act is short (a little over 400 lines) and sharply focused. We have one plot — Claudio is arrested and sentenced to death, and Lucio asks Isabella to appeal the sentence — and hints of a second one — the disguised Duke spying on Angelo. It’s all pretty straightforward, and moves along quickly, but there are a couple of questions:

— Why does the Duke address Escalus at the beginning of the play, instead of Angelo, his deputy? It’s not yet clear just what role Escalus will play: it’s apparently going to be more than just #2 to Angelo.

— Why is the Duke hastily abandoning his duties as magistrate? We don’t find out until 1.3. Meanwhile there is speculation that he is engaging in secret diplomatic negotiations, but by 1.4 there are already suspicions that that may just be a cover story. We may remember that Prospero, in a play not yet written, has also abandoned his duties as magistrate, and delegated them to another.

I suppose the purpose of 1.2 is to establish that there is a lot of licentious talk and behavior in the Duke’s Vienna, but I did not find the chatter to be especially pertinent. We hear that there has been some kind of “proclamation” or “speech” about public morality, and soon hear that bawdy houses are being closed and arrests are already being made.

Angelo presumably decides to make an example of Claudio, even though several of the characters, including the chaste Isabella, think it would be a perfectly good solution to have Claudio make an honest woman out of Juliana, especially since they are already contracted. Wouldn’t the audience agree with her?

1.3 provides some important context. The Duke acknowledges that he has let things slip, and that he has not been enforcing the laws. And he knows that Angelo is a man of “[self]-stricture and abstinence” and — to put the best construction on it — wants to test Angelo, to see if “power change purpose.” But there’s another way to construe the Duke’s actions: he has failed as a magistrate, knows that the laws and the magistrate need to be respected, and gets Angelo to play the heavy, and to enforce the laws. In that way the Duke can avoid being accused of “tyranny” and the target of criticism. Is the Duke’s secondary purpose, the testing of Angelo, just a cover for his own negligence?

1.4 moves us right along toward a crisis (in Act 2) by having Lucio ask Isabella to appeal on behalf of Claudio. Before Lucio comes in, we learn that Isabella wants “more strict restraint” on herself as novice nun. Does that mean she is akin to Angelo? But she doesn’t censure her brother or impose strict restraints on him: she thinks he should just marry Juliana. And even though she is pure, she readily agrees, since she is not yet a professed nun, to speak to Angelo. Maybe we remember Iago asking Desdemona to intercede with Othello on behalf of Cassio.

Michael:

The title of the play suggests some question of law and justice, but whether strict justice — as you measure, so it will be measured unto you — or a “measured” justice remains to be seen.

The Duke seems something of a mystery, whether he’s testing Angelo or wants Angelo to tighten up what he’s let slide, is unclear in the beginning. He’ll later be called the “duke of dark corners” I seem to recall. But the general direction seems to suggest a plot that will explore justice.

Escalus will before long represent something of a foil to Angelo; I think we see him as an older, maybe more experienced dispenser of justice.

When we first see Claudio he says his “possession” of Juliet was “upon a true contract.” And he confirms that she is “fast my wife,” so it would seem there is no real crime or sin involved, lacking as they do simply the forms of marriage. (I think of an eighteen-year-old who was in a similar situation some years earlier with a woman a bit older than he.) So it doesn’t sound that dangerous except that the new deputy is intent on tightening things up.

Yes, Isabella’s desire for more strictures on the votarists of St. Clare does suggest of certain parallel with what we’ll learn of Angelo. But she seems to agree that the offense is not a great one and that Claudio could simply marry his pregnant girlfriend.

Everything thus far seems to point to a mitigation of the offense.

But then in Act 2 we see that Angelo is not looking for a way out, that he wants the law to be followed strictly. Escalus argues mitigation, partly that he comes of a good family, but also appealing to Angelo’s sense of having had similar temptation. But Angelo’s adamant and suggests that his possible temptation to something similar does not cancel Claudio’s offense.

At this point the entry of the Provost, and Elbow the constable, Froth, Pompey and others indicates an analogous judicial proceeding. The comic scene depends on the malapropping of Elbow in the usual way of Shakespeare’s constables. What Elbow says is pretty much the opposite of what he means to say, and Escalus is left to sort it all out. Significantly Angelo loses patience with it all and leaves it Escalus to untangle. Which he eventually does, finally allowing Froth and Pompey off with a warning. The effect seems to suggest that such charges are complicated by language and intent and evade any attempt to reach a conclusion. When Escalus asks Pompey if being a bawd is a lawful trade, the latter responds that it would be if the law allowed it. When Escalus counters that the law won’t allow it, Pompey asks if Escalus intends to geld and spay all the youth of the city. And any policy of rigor will depopulate the city. The low-life characters seem to win the argument. And when he turns to Elbow, he learns that he’s constable pretty much because no one else wants to do it; he’s constable by default. Law seems to have painted itself into a corner.

So this bit of context for justice in Viena surrounds the matter of Claudio and Juliet, who look quite harmless and almost innocent by comparison.

In scene 2 Angelo argues with the Provost over Claudio’s guilt and what should be done to Juliet. Then Isabella comes with Lucio to plead for Claudio. Isabella’s rigidity is initially rather cold and ineffective, but urged on by Lucio she becomes more persuasive. She even sounds a bit like Portia in Merchant when she asserts the marshal’s truncheon and the judge’s robe do not become them with as much grace as mercy does. Isabella grows in persuasion as the dialogue proceeds, directing the discussion in a theological direction: “man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority . . . Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes angels weep . . .” The provost is certainly won over. And Angelo begins to yield. At the end of the scene he speaks a soliloquy that indicates his inner capitulation to her vehemence.

Next the Duke, disguised as a friar, comes in and speaks with Juliet, who repents the sin of her sexual encounter with Claudio, but also indicates its mutual character. The duke says her sin was then the “heavier” than his, but no explanation is given for this. He leaves her with no encouragement.

With scene 4 Angelo is pretty much unraveled by his discussion with Isabella, and he is happy to talk with her. He suggests that fornication is a kind of forgery, coining God’s image without warrant, which suggests that his own defense is turning in a theological direction. Then he springs his trap and suggests that she can redeem her brother with her own yielding to him. At first she seems not to believe him. But he spells it out more clearly, which of course shocks her. But he suggests that if she will not agree to this, she’s as cruel to Claudio as he would be in his prior judgment. She remains skeptical of his offer, thinking it may be a trick. But his reputation will protect him from any denunciation she might make. Her final soliloquy depends on her confidence that Claudio will simply reject any such bargain for his life.

By the end of the act the legal rigidities appear to be crumbling. On to Claudio’s equally crumbling moral rigidity in Act 3.

Dusty:

How should a director play 2.1? If it’s purely for laughs, then do we think the Duke has a good enough reason to enforce the laws? But if Pompey, Froth, et al. are presented as sleazy lowlifes, and if Vienna on the stage seems to be dark and degenerate, then the Duke has clearly failed, and maybe somebody like Angelo is needed. If Angelo is presented as a rigid heavy, impatiently determined to stamp out vice at any cost, it’s easy to dismiss him and to take a relaxed and permissive attitude toward popular vices. But if he is presented as a young reformer, trying to clean up the city, the stakes are higher and the moral questions more difficult for the audience to resolve.

When Isabella  in 2.2 takes so long to get around to the point of asking that Claudio be pardoned, is she a parody of Pompey and Elbow? Ditto when she asks Angelo if he has ever felt temptations. Yes, she reminded me of Portia too. Does Angelo have a case — that the law is not dead and has merely been sleeping?

In some ways Isabella and Angelo seem to be working at cross purposes. When she says at 142 “I’ll bribe you,” I was shocked. Did the audience think she was going to offer herself? Later, when Angelo begins hinting at what he wants, Isabella seems to think he is talking about abstract principles or hypothetical situations, until she finally realizes that he is talking about laying hands on her body.

In 2.3 does the Duke’s remark about the “heavier” sin just make a joke about Juliet’s big belly? When Angelo in 2.4 sends “empty words” to heaven, I thought of Claudius in Hamlet.

How does a director present 2.4? If Angelo at the outset is already scheming and preparing to seduce Isabella, we dismiss him as a slimy and corrupt magistrate. I think the play works better — and is more challenging — if Angelo is seen as making a good case — maybe it is justified to commit a sin in order to save a life — and struggling with himself.

As for Isabella, you suggest that she counts on Claudio rejecting the bargain that Angelo proposes. But I wonder if her language — “Better . . . a brother died at once,/ Than that a sister, by redeeming him,/ Should die for ever” and the more personal “More than our brother is our chastity” — suggests that she is taking a hard line and ready to defend it. If so, she turns out to be rather like Angelo, or even to take the place of Angelo as hardliner.

Dusty:

The Duke’s speech, at the opening of Act 3, designed to prepare Claudio for death, and addressed as a series of rebukes to “Life,” though full of traditional homiletic arguments, is powerful, and deserves to be better known. It links in my mind with a couple of other more famous speeches, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” and  Jaques’ seven ages of man. Claudio seems to be initially persuaded by it, and resolves to die — until he hears from Isabella that there is a way out.

And then he gets a great speech: “Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.” While Hamlet is deterred from suicide by the uncertainty of death, Claudio is quite certain that it will be endless punishment. The Duke had focused on arousing contempt of life, but Claudio here insists that “The weariest and most loathed worldly life/ . . . is a paradise/ To what we fear of death.” (Isn’t that a version of what Achilles said to Odysseus in the underworld? But the underworld of Achilles is a paradise compared to the Dante-like torture that Claudio imagines.)

The play has reached a crisis: Isabella has already righteously refused Angelo and now self-righteously refuses Claudio. She is left alone by everybody on stage, and because of her cold rectitude the audience wonders if it should leave her too. At this crucial moment the Duke intervenes: events in Vienna are getting out of  hand, the Duke is losing control of his plot, and the play is veering directly for death and tragedy. Re-enter the Duke, to save the day.

It’s not clear to me why his first move is to assure Claudio that Angelo was just testing Isabella (compare Cymbeline). His second move is to introduce a new character, Mariana, who will prove to be at the center of a bed trick (compare All’s Well). Why has Shakespeare not told us about Mariana before? You would think that somebody could have said something back in Act 1. The Duke seems to have the bed trick all worked out — his mind must move quickly — and he explains it concisely to Isabella, who quickly agrees to play her part. Why she should not protest even pretending to comply with the vicious Angelo is not explained.

Once the Duke’s counterplotting bed trick is set up, the pressure is off, and Shakespeare can return to comedy. So we get another scene with Pompey and Elbow. Lucio declines to save Pompey — a parody of Isabella declining to save Claudio — and then knowingly challenges the “Friar.” Attention shifts to the character of the Duke: the doubts raised by Lucio are later countered by the praise from Escalus.

3.2 includes a sort of reprise of 1.2, but Escalus is now a more severe and less tolerant judge, sending Mistress Overdone to prison. So maybe Vienna vice needs to be cleaned up after all.

I don’t know why we need the Duke’s “epilogue” in rhymed seven-syllable couplets. Is it designed to signal a change in the dramatic mode of the play?

Michael:

Yes, the duke/friar’s homily at the beginning of Act 3 is colorful and has some power, and Claudio seems to be persuaded. But his resolution will dissolve immediately when he’s confronted with the possibility of living. And the speech he gives there (3.1. 118ff) seems to have a power that simply erases the homiletic commonplaces of the duke/friar. It is a somewhat bizarre imagining of death, but in no way comforting. And his pleading with Isabella, though cowardly, seems almost expected. Her anger, just as understandable, seems extreme and harsh. Is there a kind of relief when he seems to recover and return to his earlier resolution?

Strangely the earlier mitigation, a proper form of betrothal and contract that means that the condemnation is simply wrong and unjust, is now forgotten. Has Angelo been correct in that condemnation?

I agree that Angelo is struggling, and only discovers his weakness after he has seen Isabella pleading for Claudio. There’s something in her that appeals to him, probably her own seriousness, that he is suddenly struck by. But rather than pursuing that attraction properly, he sees the possibility of short-cutting usual wooing and going for physical fulfillment. This is strange. But does it connect with his dark earlier history, his abandonment of Mariana and with what is coming in his ordering of the execution of Claudio? There’s a growing darkening of Angelo, which throws up more doubt about the Duke’s choice of him to tighten things up in Vienna.

Given what Angelo has done to Mariana, we do wonder about her continuing attraction to him — and whether the Duke’s plan to link them makes good sense. Of course she is obsessed with him, but does this mean that she should be married to him?

Michael:

The song the boy sings for her at the beginning of Act 4 doesn’t project confidence. The bed trick plot seems problematic, though maybe we don’t notice this in performance. How is Mariana supposed to prove that it was she who lay with Angelo?

Pompey’s apprenticeship to Abhorson seems further to pull the rug from under any legitimacy or dignity of law. And the lack of cooperation from Bernardine takes this even further. The law can’t seem to get the right people executed, and it finally must result to Ragazine’s head to satisfy Angelo.

At the conclusion of 4.2 the Duke promises his return, which may signal a restoration of law, but it depends first on Bernardine’s beheading. Which he won’t cooperate with. In 4.3 we have Pompey commenting on the resemblance of the prison with the population of Mistress Overdone’s house. And then Bernardine’s uncooperative attitude, which the Duke as friar cannot alter. It’s then we get the Raguzine solution, which the Duke as friar sees as a heaven-sent opportunity. So now we see further use of the head that presumably will be Macbeth’s, then Cloten’s.

Why does the Duke keep Isabella in the dark about what the plans are with Ragusine’s head and the confrontation with Angelo? She of course believes she’s been betrayed by Angelo when the pardon has not come for Claudio. And the Duke says it’s for her good, that she should be required to under go this. Of course secrecy seems needed for the Duke’s plans, but why this should mean more suffering for Isabella doesn’t appeared justified.

It’s Lucio who calls the Duke “the old fantastical Duke of dark corners,” and while we know we can’t trust Lucio on anything, especially anything connected with the Duke, it does seem a proper description of what he’s been doing. The exchange between Lucio and the friar/duke at the conclusion of 4.4 is amusing, and his lies about the Duke are wrong, but it serves the useful purpose of make the audience wonder about the Duke’s plans.

And doubts about the Duke are compounded in 4.4 in the dialogue between Escalus and Angelo about what the Duke intends in his return. Angelo’s soliloquy at the end of the scene speaks his realization of the difficulty of his position. Is the “he” of line 27 Claudio? Angelo now seems to regret the supposed execution. The next two short scenes prepare for the return of the Duke.

I think we sense by the end of Act 4 that all will be well. But there is much to sort out of the Duke’s motivations plans.

Dusty:

It would be quite a different play if Angelo, overcome with Isabella’s eloquence and beauty, were persuaded by her, and then began to woo her. If Isabella consented — and we already sense that she is somewhat like him — then the play turns into comedy and is soon over. Instead of imagining a conventional option for Angelo, Shakespeare, as you say, darkens him. We learn that he has offered to take a “bribe” from Isabella to save Claudio, and we find out much later that (five years earlier) Angelo has (inexplicably) abandoned Mariana.

As  Act 3 ends it looks as if the Duke’s bedtrick is going to resolve everything, but his plan meets with problems  when Angelo, going from bad to worse, advances the execution of Claudio,  presumably because he realizes that once Claudio finds out that he has bedded his sister Claudio will come after him. (Yes, I think that at 4.4.26 Angelo’s “he” refers to Claudio.) At this point you would think the Duke would realize that he needs to step in and countermand the execution, but he does not, perhaps thinking that he will still be able to save Claudio. He manages to persuade the Provost to disobey instructions — and why should the Provost agree to do what “the Friar” wants even before the Friar produces a signed paper from the Duke?

The Duke’s plan meets another obstacle, when Bardardine refuses to be executed today, and that obstacle is surmounted when a new (dead) character, Ragozine, is conveniently invented and introduced.

Like you, I do not understand why the Duke keeps Isabella in the dark. It seems especially cruel of him to tell her that her brother is dead. Has the Duke become too attached to his ingenious but increasingly rickety plot? (He seems to realize that he is not able to control all events, and thus has to send out notices that he is about to return to Vienna.) Or does Shakespeare want to keep us on tenterhooks?

Just as the Duke is finding that he is unable to execute his plan, so too Angelo is finding that his “plot” is not going well: Isabella might denounce him (since, as he thinks, he has double-crossed her and killed Claudio), and now the Duke has announced his return.

I am not confident at the end of Act 4 that “all will be well.” There are still some knots to untie. I agree with you, though, that our doubts about the Duke have increased.

I gather from my editor’s notes that the text of the play is not settled: maybe that in part explains why you and I both come up with unanswered questions.

Dusty:

In Act 5  the Duke reenters, and in one long scene brings everybody together. Nobody seems to recognize him except Lucio, whose comments suggest that he saw through the “Friar” disguise: “I know what I know.” (If the Duke is “the duke of dark corners,” Lucio shines a bright light into those corners.) Isabella very effectively plays the part of wronged maiden, mixing truth and lies, reporting accurately Angelo’s proposition and inaccurately what happened on the Tuesday night. Maybe she still feels wronged, since she thinks Claudio has been killed at Angelo’s orders.

The Duke conducts the inquest by his own rules. He denounces the testimony of Isabella and Mariana, without questioning them, and later accepts Mariana’s testimony, without proof. It’s not clear to me why, when the witnesses against him have been discredited, Angelo confesses at 364. Perhaps Shakespeare need to rehabilitate him, since he will not be punished in the end. Why does the Duke need to discharge the Provost so callously, except to keep up  his game?

Why should the Duke continue to conceal from Isabella that Claudio lives? This again seems cruel and pointless — unless the Duke is in fact testing both Angelo and Isabella, and trying to get both of them to bend, Angelo to confess and Isabella to pardon her rapist (and Claudio’s killer). This is a curious way to go about wooing her, which is what he apparently has in mind. Once Isabella has asked that Angelo be pardoned, Claudio can be produced.

The Duke insists that Angelo must die — “An Angelo for Claudio; death for death” —  and gives a severe interpretation of the play’s title, that it means “an eye for an eye.” It turns out that this is all part of his charade.

The resolution distributes rewards and pardons to everybody except Lucio. It would appear that the Duke has personal reasons to be so hard on Lucio — who had been needling the Duke all along — which tends to suggest that “justice,” Viennese style, is hardly ideal.

An unsettling surprise — to me, at least — comes when the Duke in effect claims Isabella’s hand and simultaneously pardons Claudio. It’s not quite the quid pro quo that Angelo offered back in Act 2, but it’s close enough for discomfort. There’s an “if” in line 488, and it may linger in the air when Duke at 490 says “Give me your hand.”) It’s a surprise, since I had not taken notice that the Duke had any interest in Isabella of that kind. And she certainly never betrayed any interest of that sort in the fatherly Friar. She says nothing in response to him — he had put it in the form of an imperative (“Give me . . .”). In fact, she says nothing at all for the rest of the play, and has not spoken since she, kneeling, asked the Duke to pardon Angelo at 442-52. A director would have to decide how to play the scene: 1) Isabella demurely accepts the Duke’s hand and walks out with him, smiling serenely; 2) Isabella gives rather chilly assent and submits to the Duke, walking out with him with  her head bowed; or 3) Isabella declines to say yes or no, and walks behind the Duke.

Will she accept him? The audience is pleased to have the various couples matched and properly married — Claudio and Juliet, Angelo and Mariana, even Lucio and his whore — but why should the audience be pleased to have Isabella matched with the Duke?

Michael:

The final scene reads like a drawn out judicial procedure as the Duke teases out the various faults and crimes. But he never seems to come to terms with the problems of his own creation.

That sudden concluding offer of the Duke to Isabella is certainly the most problematic element in this problem play. He had expressed admiration for her earlier (3.1. 181ff; but our texts may have different line divisions), and now she has forgiven Angelo, perhaps for Mariana’s sake, still thinking he has killed Claudio. So clearly he is taken by her goodness in this. But this offer is sudden, comes just as she sees that Claudio is alive, and pays no attention to what had earlier been her intention of enter a convent. And her silence here and at the very end certainly offers the director an option in how to play this. The Duke may be an interesting chap, but what he’s done here is not an unexceptional demonstration of the best practice for restoring law ‘n order. And his impulsive sense, as it appears, that he should get married, and married to a woman who has little reason to admire him, is a bit bizarre. Is Lucio right after all? Well, probably not, as he’s the only one punished, if being married to the prostitute he’s got pregnant is a condign punishment. But it would seem a reasonable conclusion if Isabella looked somewhat nonplussed at the Duke’s offer and turned aside in perplexity. It could of course be played even more strongly, and probably has.

Also, how is the marriage of Angelo to Mariana to be played? Angelo has shown himself a thoroughly hypocritical and deceitful person in condemning Claudio, and it’s not his doing that Claudio is still alive. Isabella’s plea for him that “His act did not o’ertake his bad intent” and “Thoughts are no subjects, Intents but merely thoughts” seems thin and an example of casuistry. Mariana’s obsession with this guy who promised to marry her five years earlier and backed out because the dowry suddenly evaporated doesn’t seem healthy, but the play insists we accept it.

Barnadine’s pardon depends on his response the genuine friar’s ministrations. So we don’t have to worry much about that. It was good enough that he refused to be executed because he was drunk.

Given the openness of the Duke/Isabella conclusion the play seems lively and playable in the contemporary world. Isabella isn’t a simpatica figure in the play, but there’s enough in her situation to make her interesting. Or maybe she could be made simpatica?

Dusty:

I agree that the play doesn’t resolve our doubts about the Duke, or persuade us that it makes sense for him to propose to Isabella or for her to accept him. The more I think about it, the more I think the actor playing her should give no sign of commitment. And you’re right that the Angelo-Mariana match only makes sense to lovelorn Mariana. Not only lovelorn, maybe deranged, to be still pining for Angelo after 5 yrs, and after he meant to bed Isabella. So the actor playing Angelo should perhaps show no enthusiasm about this enforced match, though he might think it better than the alternative (i.e. prison, or execution).

Maybe the play does not insist that we accept marriage as the solution to all problems. Maybe it’s only the Duke who does. And maybe Lucio is right about the Duke. It doesn’t count much against him that he is punished by the Duke — as I suggested earlier, the Duke may have his own private reasons for wanting to punish Lucio arbitrarily. (Is he planning to require all Viennese prostitutes who get pregnant to marry their customers?)

In any case the marital resolution at the end of the play is a curious one: in two of the enforced weddings the girl is pregnant; in a third the guy hasn’t talked to the girl for five years; and in the fourth the girl is on the brink of entering a convent.

Michael:

I think we’ve decided that this “problem play” remains a problem from a variety of angles. Interesting and filled with significant questions, but not entirely satisfying.