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Measure for Measure and Elizabethan Comedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Murray Krieger
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Extract

Commentators on Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, in addressing themselves to a variety of problems, have arrived at equally varied conclusions about the quality of the play. Behind all of these comments, however, whether favorable or unfavorable, lies one common assumption: that the play, on the surface at least, is not entirely satisfactory and therefore requires a somewhat exceptional elucidation. It is conceded even by defenders of the play that there are apparent moral inconsistencies which need to be resolved, that many questionable actions must be accounted for if the Duke and Isabella are to be saved as completely “good” characters. For example, attention is frequently called to the shifty delays and intrigues of the Duke, to Isabella's self-righteous prudery which would at once sacrifice a brother—indeed would violently damn him for asking her to yield her virginity to save him—and sanction the substitution of Mariana for herself. Also there is some question whether the play conforms adequately to a legitimate dramatic genre. Shakespeare has been charged with taking the stuff of tragedy and forcing it into the mold of comedy by asking his audience to accept Angelo's last-minute repentance and marriage to Mariana. Finally, there are certain apparent inconsistencies in the dramatic action, which suggest to some commentators a possible corruption of the text. For example, at the beginning of the play the Duke characterizes Angelo as without blemish; yet later he reveals that Angelo wrongly deserted Mariana before the start of the action. Similarly, Mariana states that she has often been comforted by Friar Lodowick (the disguised Duke), although we know that the Duke has just adopted this disguise.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 5 , September 1951 , pp. 775 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 775 Meas. iv.i.8–9. The many students of the time-sequence of the play invariably cite this and similar problems to support their claims of textual abnormalities. For the various treatments of the problems summarized in this paragraph, see notes 2, 3, 4, and 6, below, and the discussion to which they refer.

Note 2 in page 776 Robert H. Wilson, “The Mariana Plot of Measure for Measure,” PQ, ix (1930), 341–350; J. M. Robertson, The Shakespeare Canon (New York, 1923), ii, 158–211; John Dover Wilson, “The Copy for Measure for Measure, 1623,” Measure for Measure, ed. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 97–113; H. N. Fairchild, “The Two Angelo's,” SAB, vi (1931), 53–59. While R. H. Wilson allows the revised play to have originally been Shakespeare's, both Robertson and Dover Wilson, whose theories differ widely in other respects, insist that much of the play is the work of an inferior hand. Fairchild, while not rejecting the revision theory, does not choose between these alternatives.

Note 3 in page 776 For general treatments, see R. W. Chambers, The Jacobean Shakespeare and “Measure for Measure,” Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the Brit. Acad. (London, 1937); R. W. Battenhouse, “Measure for Measure and Christian Doctrine of the Atonement,” ?MLA, LXI (1946), 1029–59. For a more detailed study of the play in terms of Elizabethan concepts of justice and mercy, seen in the writings of popular contemporary theologians, see Elizabeth M. Pope, “The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge, 1949), ii, 62–82.

Note 4 in page 776 Shakespeare's Satire (New York, 1943), pp. 121–141.

Note 5 in page 776 George Whetstone, The Historie of Promos and Cassandra (1578).

Note 6 in page 776 Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), pp. 78–121. Lawrence believes that by tracing the Whetstone play back, via Cinthio, to an actual occurrence, he can reveal the essential realism in the story.

Note 7 in page 777 For a study of this field, see Joel E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1920), especially pp. 60–74, 283–290, and George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, ii (London, 1928), Book iv. For Elizabethan critical statements, see Sidney, Lodge, Puttenham, Harington, and Jonson in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904). For Italian critical statements see, for example, Trissino, Cinthio, Scaliger, and Minturno in Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan H. Gilbert (New York, 1940).

Note 8 in page 778 Many quoted selections in support of this discussion may be found in David Klein's collection of such statements in his Literary Criticism from the Elizabethan Dramatists (New York, 1910). While, as a follower of Spingarn and a Crocean, he tries to show Elizabethan practice to be a romantic rebellion of the imagination against mechanical rules, the evidence he presents seems rather to point toward the more practical reason that I have indicated. For the best extant example of the dual consciousness of classical rules on the one hand and the kind of drama being successfully produced on the other, see Thomas Heywood's An Apology for Actors (1612). Here we have references both to Donatus and to popular practice.

Note 9 in page 779 The peculiar case of Marston will be discussed in another connection later in this paper.

Note 10 in page 779 See A. H. Thorndike, “The Pastoral Element in the English Drama before 1605,” MLN, XIV (1899), 228–246; W. W. Greg, Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama (London, 1906), pp. 215–235, 338–345; Ronald Bayne, “Masque and Pastoral,” CHEL (1910), vi, 370–420; V. M. Jeffery, “Italian and English Pastoral Drama of the Renaissance,” MLR, xix (1924), 56–62, 175–187, 435–444. While there is some dispute here concerning Italian influence and native English tradition in the early pastoral play, all agree that there was an early (i.e., pre-17th-century) pastoral tradition, however derived.

Note 11 in page 780 Greg (see n. 10), pp. 338–341.

Note 12 in page 783 This is Miss Pope's contention (see note 3, above).

Note 13 in page 784 For the probable date of The Malcontent, see Harold R. Walley, “The Dates of Hamlet and Marston's The Malcontent,” RES, ix (1933), 397–409. I am also greatly indebted to Professor Walley for innumerable suggestions in the preparation of this paper.

Note 14 in page 784 My criticism here certainly is not meant to apply to Campbell, whose point-of-view was so helpful to me in formulating my own. All I could further ask of him would be a fuller appreciation of the non-classical dramatic tradition as a positive and defined force.