The Bible and Western Culture - Part 3 - Shakespeare: Measure for Measure

[Music] i'm going to talk about shakespeare's play measure for measure today and before i go directly into the details of shakespeare's play i'd like to step back a little bit from drama and talk about the genres of comedy and tragedy the reason why is because shakespeare is one of the most remarkable of literary artists in the sense that he is capable of producing both comedy and tragedy at a grand scale he's capable of taking both of those genres of drama to their maximum potential so the contrast between them may be of some use to us because the comedy we're going to look at today measure for measure is one of shakespeare's great underrated achievements now the first thing we should consider is the fact that comedy and tragedy characters characteristically end differently comedies end in marriage tragedies end in death if you think of things like the greek tragedies almost all of greek tragic heroes have some fatal flaw do something wrong make a mess of their lives and at the end of it they die but before their death a tragic hero always meets some realization about the human condition finds out about their fatal flaw and the consequence of that is that they realize something about the human condition tragedy is a very fatalistic sort of dramatic form comedy is different comedies characteristically end in marriage rather than death and this difference be or this juxtaposition between ending and death or ending in life because marriage can be thought of as symbolic sex but also it's connected with generation and reproduction and what that means is that comedy is more closely connected in its conclusions with life and with continuity tragedy is about death and it's about finality in addition to that i would be inclined to say that tragedy is about individuals whereas comedy is about types think of shakespeare's great tragedies hamlet is not an example of a prince of denmark he is not an example of a man who thinks too much and acts too little he is specifically hamlet prince of denmark king lear is not merely a foolish old man that gave his daughters his kingdom in fact he is a specific man that did a specific thing all of tragedy individuates and tragedy is always about specific individual people comedy on the other hand surprisingly enough is not primarily about specific people primarily comedy is about types we can think of many examples the best could be taken from moliere think about some of the titles of moliere's great comedies the miser not joe the miser but rather the miser the general type of the miser the misanthrope not bob the misanthrope but the misanthropic man even something like moliere's play don juan falls into that category let me try to illustrate that by comparing say um the way we think about comic and tragic heroes suppose we had a young man who was excessively attracted to women and slept around a lot we might be tempted to say he's a real don juan the reason why is that don juan is not a specific person don juan is the type of the promiscuous man so although it may appear that moyer is violating the rule in fact don juan is a type of a person let's juxtapose that same young man instead of sleeping around a lot let's imagine that he's very jealous about the woman in his life none of us would be tempted to say he's a real othello even though othello himself was a man whose tragic flaw was his excessive jealousy the point is othello is a specific person and we are not inclined to make the analogy from othello or hamlet or king lear to people in the world around us on the other hand comic heroes heroes that are not quite as grand as the tragic strutting and roaring are much more like us and as a consequence of that they become indistinguishable types they are kinds of people this works for the comedies of aristophanes as well i'm going to try and make the argument today that it works for shakespeare's comedies in particular i would say that it works for shakespeare's greatest comedy measure for measure measure for measure it was written in 1604 around the same time that shakespeare was writing his great tragedies this is within a few years on either side of macbeth lear hamlet othello it's strange to see the fact that shakespeare is perhaps the preeminent literary switch hitter in the western tradition shakespeare is capable of producing both superior comedies and superior tragedies on the fly without noticeable disjunction in the way he thinks about the world now i would like to take it a little bit further and make a more complicated argument i would like to argue that tragedy is intrinsically a non-christian art form the tragedy is intrinsically pagan think about the way in which a tragedy characteristically ends greek tragedy is a good example choose something like antigone the end of the play she dies what she finds out is that she has had some terrible flaw and she has somehow been the cause of her own demise the point of tragedy both greek tragedy and shakespearean tragedy is that this superior hero finds out something about themselves that they didn't know before and they also find out something about the human condition and when they find this out about the human condition that there is no recourse for human beings that eventually we all die and even superior people cause their own destruction we are left with a very fatalistic outlook on life my argument then is that it's not accidental that tragedy is caught up with the ancient greek tradition it's not possible to write a tragedy from the christian perspective because at the end of a christian life the person dies but that's not all there is to the story inevitably for a christian there is god's judgment thereafter and that utterly changes the meaning of life for a christian so my argument then is that if you look over the history of literature you will never find a tragedy a true tragedy written from the christian perspective because at the end of a tragedy the tragic hero has to die unredeemed the whole point of christianity or one of the major points is the idea of redemption and judgment for individual sins now on the other hand in contrast to tragedy comedy can be a christian art form and i want to argue at least in the case of shakespeare's measure for measure that this is the christian dramatic form and that shakespeare's measure for measure is the christian comedy i want to try and make the rather large argument that shakespeare's measure for measure is the greatest comedy written in the western tradition now i'll make the argument in aesthetic terms in other words this is my feeling about it you need not adopt my feelings but i'll try and make a good argument first that shakespeare is hunting intellectual big game in measure for measure he is actually trying to recapitulate the entire bible in the form of a comedy which is an amazing intellectual achievement and also it marks an apogee of intellectual aspiration and ambition even if he doesn't completely pull this off the idea of reducing the entire the entirety of the bible and more importantly the entirety of the christian view of history to one narrative taking the form the allegorical form of a comedy if he were to pull that off and if i were able to make that argument i believe that we would be faced with the greatest of shakespeare's comedies and i think it would be proper to argue that shakespeare's comic achievements are at least at the level of his tragic achievements it is often the case that we pay more philosophical attention to tragedy uh tragedy gets all the good inks spilled over it we only have aristotle's discussion of tragedy not of comedy perhaps the history of comedy would have been different if we had but i'd like to try and make the unusual argument that shakespeare's measure for measure is the greatest christian comedy of one of shakespeare's greatest achievements now i don't mean to say that shakespeare himself was a christian i doubt that very much the man that could write king lear does not have any great hope of eternal salvation and eternal life the man who writes such fine tragedies must have a heavy dose of the pagan in him my feeling is rather that shakespeare is the most extraordinary of intellectual switch hitters he was able to produce both comedy and tragedy and when he was producing this particular comedy in 1604 he decided that he would go and organize this work of art completely from the christian perspective not because he was a devout christian like someone like saint augustine but rather because he was intellectually showing off he wanted to show that he was the ultimate literary artist and that he could write the best possible play in any sort of genre so i think that the intellectual ambitions of measure for measure do not reflect shakespeare's christian leanings they actually reflect something much more like pagan vanity i believe it was plato at the end of the symposium that says that the same artist could write great tragedies and great comedies well very few have lived up to that possibility shakespeare has decided that he shall now measure for measure the characters are of great importance in this and i'll move i'll start with them before i go to the plot there is first of all a series of minor characters that have no real symbolic importance these are elbow pompe froth and mistress overdone and they are the patrons of a brothel and mistress overdone is the proprietor of a brothel and these people offer us throughout the course of the play at various critical moments comic relief and comic relief is very important in a comedy that means to encapsulate all of christianity in other words it would fail in its comic purpose if it didn't have certain slapstick elements in it you would lose the sense of it being a comedy it would be far too serious so shakespeare knowing how to balance these things has written in in an oblique way comic relief that is not part of the essential structure symbolically of the play now the other characters are all symbolic and i want to make the argument that the whole christian view of history is here and that every one of the main characters has a christian symbol attached to it the first is the duke now the duke is the ruler of vienna the city in which this play is set and the duke in the beginning of the play leaves for no reason that's obvious to the people involved and he delegates his authority to two people angelo and and when he leaves he returns later on at the end of the play and judges in disguise and removes his disguise and comes back to judge everyone who has been wicked during the course of the play and that sounds specifically and suspiciously like the end of the world let's see how the duke pans out in the course of this play the two people that he leaves in charge i want to call them the personifications of greek wisdom the two people he leaves in charge are named escalus and angelo escolus did not get his name accidentally escalus is a wise old man who understands human frailties and human flaws he's constantly arguing for mercy given the fact that people cannot always meet the standard of the law escolas understands human frailty and the impossibility of creating a perfect political order the other element in the greek tradition that's re that obs that gets this authority from the absent duke is named angelo and the name itself gives away angelo's predispositions angelo is the man who thinks that he can be perfect angelo represents the tradition of platonic perfectionism angelo thinks that since he has never been tempted by the various sins that he sees in other people that he is immune to them he believes that he's better than they are he believes that he's capable of standing in for the duke and he's going to try and stand in for the duke but it will turn out that our would-be angel our would-be perfect man is incapable of perfection and sin particularly the sin of lust the sin which is connected with the fall of man at the beginning of the bible turns out to be his downfall a sin that he had never experienced before so in addition to the duke who's gone and aeschylus and angelo we have several other characters which would be relevant to our symbolic analysis the first will be lucio now you can guess who lucio is from his name he's lucifer he's the devil he's the tempter and he's a great patron of the house that has been recently pulled down that and he's involved in many of the scenes of comic relief and in addition not only is a hellion and not only is he a tempter he is great at blaspheming he is great at saying that he knows the duke well and he knows full well that the duke likes to drink and likes to uh to chase women and has a great many moral vices angela lucio is in fact the role of the devil in this play he represents sin and he represents temptation and we'll see how that pans out in the course of the play now another key figure in this play is isabella isabella is a novice nun she has not taken her final vows yet but she is extremely pious extremely devoted she spends a great deal of time praying and fasting and involved in mortification of the flesh and she is virgin the key thing here is not virginity by itself but rather virginity as a symbol of uncorrupted selfhood of a lack of a sinful inc sinful nature or at least not succumbing to the temptations of sin she will maintain her chastity throughout the play may i suggest that she may well represent the christian church in fact isabella is an attempt to talk about the relationship between church and state and her interaction with angelo the man that would be perfect will turn out to be most intriguing for understanding of how the christian will view history now another key figure in this play he has somewhat of a minor role but he sets the ball rolling in terms of the plot is named claudio claudio is isabella's brother and claudio has been caught in fornication he has gotten his betrothed with child and as a result of that when the duke leaves because there have been a considerable amount of license in in vienna when the duke leaves angelo passes judgment on claudio he says claudio you must die for your sins now what we get out of that is a situation of great tension this is the first act of the play the duke has departed angelo and escalus don't know what to do angelo the man who would be perfect who would be personally perfect but also the man who would create a perfect political order he is that drive towards platonic perfectionism angelo says from now on the law will be enforced without regard to pity or mercy we will create a perfect political order now that the duke is gone and i have all the authority in vienna i am now going to enforce the law we will have moral perfection angelo believes himself right in trying to enforce moral perfection because angela believes that he is without sin we will find many biblical references throughout the course of this play but those of you who know the uh the parable that's in the synoptic gospels uh about the woman taken in adultery where jesus invites the crowd who that wants to stone her and says let him who has who is without sin cast the first stone well angelo would be up at front of the line ready to cast the first stone because he has not absorbed the christian message he believes that he is without sin and that gives him the right to judge other people consider just briefly the title measure for measure those of you that know the gospels perhaps know matthew chapter 7 verses 1 and 2 where it says judge not that you may not be judged for with what judgment you judge you yourself shall be judged for the measure you give will be the measure you get back yes indeed this is a play about justice and it's about mercy and it's about the possibility of extending charity to all people because all human governments are made up of frail and fallible and sinful people who are themselves in need of charity and mercy along with justice the measure you give will be the measure you get back so we get the duke departed lucio uh rather angelo has decided that he will be something superhuman that he will deal out justice in god stead and he will enforce the law perfectly lucio in the second scene of the first act he finds out that his friend claudio who has been engaging in this fornication is now being sent off to jail and is condemned and he does what seems to be his only altruistic thing in the whole play because lucio is constantly unkind and constantly evil constantly miserable he says well i must go help my friend claudio and the way in which he decides to go help his friend claudio is to go to the nunnery where his sister isabella is awaiting to take her vows and persuade her to go and intercede with angelo for the life of her brother the point being that although this appears to be altruistic and this appears to be a kind-hearted thing in fact it is exactly the opposite what lucio has done here is set one saint or one would be saint against another one who really understands christian morality and the other who is a pharisee a hypocrite a would-be perfect individual and whichever one falls and whichever one remains steadfast he can't help but win so in fact lucio the tempter is setting one image of virtue against another image of virtue knowing that they both cannot stand in fact it is a carefully and diabolically crafted scene isabella the pure virginal chaste and moral nun goes to angelo and the scene is remarkable in the wings we have lucio the tempter and isabella doesn't know what to say she's not used to dealing with politicians and at the sides as she delivers her speech asking for mercy for her brother she is inclined to hold back because she knows that there is a certain degree of justice in it she believes fornication to be an evil she thinks that her brother merits punishment she feels that the punishment is excessive she is pleading for mercy her pleas for mercy go unanswered but they gradually begin to melt angelo angelo begins to melt like an ice cube but from the inside out he melts in the soul first for the first time in his life angelo feels lust angelo begins to feel sexual desire and angelo the man who would be perfect starts to become corrupt there is a saying that absolutely power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely well when the duke leaves he leaves under very mysterious circumstances we don't quite know why he would do that it turns out that he wishes to test angelo because he knows that of all the men in his kingdom angelo is the one of the highest moral character and if it turns out that angelo is incapable of bearing the responsibility of political power that means that there is no human being that can dispense god's justice and if that's the case then the idea of perfecting society ignoring the tragic insight that human beings are essentially flawed and incapable of perfection this play is an elaborate christian criticism of that stance consider how the play develops when we get to the scene with angelo and isabella and lucio in the wings telling her a little bit harder a little bit further come on persuade him you want your brother's life he keeps on egging her on and the more he eggs her on the more persuasive her arguments become and the more persuasive her arguments become the more angelo begins to melt it's a remarkable psychological play because when she leaves he is totally unnerved he said oh no for the first time i have encountered lust and i don't know what to do and he says in particular oh cunning devil who uh who to catch a saint baits his hook with a saint oh yes the snares of satan are very carefully laid in this play and once you begin to realize that it's to be understood at the allegorical symbolical level it all begins to fall together well the dukkha is waiting in the wings while angelo does these deeds while he is involved in dispensing justice a very harsh justice to to claudio and while isabella is talking to him angelo says look away made coming back come back and talk to me tomorrow i cannot talk to you today obviously he is losing his grip we cut away and we see this in the next scene third scene the duke is back but he's back in disguise yes the duke has come as returned to vienna but he hasn't come in pomp and circumstance looking like a political leader he has come back described as a friar disguised as a holy man the friar will overhear all the things that the duke is not meant to overhear throughout the play this theme of overhearing when people think they're alone is in fact a gesture at god's omnipotence and omniscience god knows all even the secrets that we believe we are keeping from the public it turns out that the friar spends a great deal of his time overhearing secret plans and making sure that they do not result in immoral consequences making sure that everyone maintains their position on the straight and narrow well angelo doesn't know that the friar is the duke and doesn't know that the duke has come back to see what manner of men the that and manner of man that angelo is and when isabella comes back on the second day to angelo he directly confronts her he says look i tell you what i will pardon your brother but i will only pardon him if you have sex with me you must give up your virginity and you must give up your possibility of being safe remember this is a mortal sin she will be damned for all time as a consequence of this on the other hand her brother will be allowed to live and there is a certain irony involved in the fact that he is being prosecuted for fornication and angelo the the would-be perfect man is now suggesting sexual blackmail it turns out that not only is he a pharisee and a hypocrite but he is worse than the man that he would condemn what does isabella do well at first she just doesn't understand the proposition i mean she is so chaste and so religious and devout that she is unable to comprehend the idea of a sex from mercy swamp and in fact she produces some of the greatest poetry shakespeare ever constructed and much of this poetry is about the virtues of mercy and charity and justice in particular she says i went to heaven that i had your potency and you were isabel should it should it then be thus no i would no i would tell what to her to to be a judge and what to be a prisoner the argument that she's making there is the golden rule if i were the judge and you came pleading to me for clemency i would give it to you but here you deny it to me and insist on sexual blackmail you would corrupt me and you would corrupt yourself and you would corrupt politics far worse than it was before the attempt to create a perfect political order or to create a perfect individual human being is bound to result in a worse condition morally so the futility of platonic perfectionism is played up here and the idea that the man who would be perfect is in fact a white and sepulcher is in fact a hypocrite is in fact worse than the people he judges is all built into this very powerful very ironic scene now while the while this argument is going on between isabella and angelo angelo is becoming progressively more evil when she refuses to have sex with him and refuses vehemently she says he says i will torture your brother to death and she says no absolutely not i will not give up the possibility of eternal life regardless of what you do here and now to my brother and my brother deserves punishment because he sinned but b it is a far greater thing for me to give up eternal life and salvation than for him to give up this small period of space and time that we are allotted at this point we are at an impasse we are at a moral a condition of incredible moral tension as angelo the man who would be perfect seems as though he is going to win the day but it turns out that the friar who is in fact the duke in disguise is back and he has heard a colloquy between between isabella and her brother claudio in the jail isabella goes to see her brother claudio and says claudio i'm sorry you have to die and the reason why you have to die is that the duke propositioned me and of course i said no now initially claudio was very brave about him says well that's okay i understand you wouldn't want to lose your soul but very shortly very quickly says look have sex with him and save my life please don't do this to me and she turns out to be a virago she makes lady macbeth look soft she laces into him with an absolute fury that you would not expect from a novice nun but the idea is that he has not only sinned in the flesh but he's intended to cause her damnation as well and she said oh weak inferior man that she would do such a thing so she refuses now this conversation is overheard by the friar and the key thing that happens is the friar says don't worry i'm going to take care of everything she says to isabel the fire says to isabella or not not to isabella but rather first to uh to julia the woman that uh claudio got with child do you repent your sins and she says yes and she says do you really repent them or do you repent the consequences she says i repent the sins truly and heart and in a heartfelt way says in that case your sins are forgiven from the woman with child he goes to the claudia who has been condemned and he says to you to claudio claudio prepare for your death you have sinned and you deserve it do not expect clemency in fact i know angelo's heart angela was just testing your sister and he was happy to see that your sister was chaste and virtuous but i have a way in which we can make this all work he conspires with isabella the chaste and virtuous novice to play a trick on angelo angelo earlier in his life it turns out the duke knows all it'll turn out the duke is omniscient which is a very handy thing if you're yahweh well it turns out that the duke knows that secretly prior to his elevation to this great status angelo had been betrothed and for no good reason for an insufficient reason had broken off the betrothal the woman still loves him now obviously this is not meant to be a realistic representation of human sexual desire because the woman still likes angelo even though he's treated her abominably and the duke knows where to find this woman her name is marianna and the duke says i know what i'm going to do i'm going to switch beds remember that all of shakespearean comedy has to do with the mistaking of appearance for reality so what they do is they make sure there will be an assignation and angelo believes that this assignation will be between him and isabella that he will get what he wants but in fact the duke has this well planned out he has complete things completely in hand he makes sure that the assignation happens in the dark rather than in the light and he makes sure that it happens in silence without any speech to give away her voice these themes of light and darkness and silence and the word help tip you off to the biblical symbolism here in fact we're going to see the sin of angelo completed or he thinks completed we must remember that angelo believes that he is sin he has sinned in his heart and his intent the fact that he fails to actually carry that sin out from the christian perspective makes no difference he's a sinner because he intended to and he will be judged on the basis of that intention well what happens is at the end of this assignation they separate and he thinks that he's done it in fact he has had sex with a woman to whom he was betrothed and then it turns out that the bed trick goes awry and here's where it turns out that isabella's idealism was not at all misplaced angelo because one sin leads to another there's no such thing as sin in the singular realizes that he is now an utterly machiavellian individual suppose he lets claudio go and suppose he knows that he has bought his life at the cost of his sister's salvation and that he is damned and she's damned as a consequence of this he may be inclined to take revenge in this world so angelo says he sends off a note to the uh to the jail immediately execute claudio in other words he double crosses the nun that he thinks he has taken advantage of because he has become an utterly machiavellian politician so it turns out that if she had had sex with him her brother would have died anyway in fact the path of religious morality turns out to be the best of all practical paths as well not succumbing is the only way to keep herself open to salvation and to keep her brother alive well it turns out that not only is there a bed switch but the friar who is the duke in disguise tells the head of the jail the provost do not engage in this execution the execution is a mistake i want you to switch heads put the head of claudio or leave claudio's head on his shoulders put the head of another prisoner who died accidentally due to a fever put that in the bag we will bring that into the prince the angelo will never know well they bring it back and we see then we have a double switch angelo believes that he has committed murder he believes that he has deflowered this virgin he believes that he has entirely lost his soul and he now must answer for it because unexpectedly without any anticipation he and escalus have received writings to the effect that the duke is going to return may i suggest to you that these writings that the duke sends and offers to send throughout the book are in fact the bible and these writings which disclose to you that the duke is going to come back and judge everybody and he's going to do the job right because he sees into people's souls and into people's intentions not like this merely human justice which is merely concerned with people's actions and does not understand intention which is fallible well the duke is coming back and naturally enough angelo and aeschylus are quite perplexed remember that esculus has done no wrong in the course of this play in fact he has been a kind and merciful judge because esculus has understood the wisdom of tragedy esculus understands that people are intrinsically imperfect and the best you can do is to try and ameliorate their flaws you will never be able to get rid of them by trying to make himself perfect and by trying to make vienna perfect angelo has committed the sin of pride and his hubris prevents him from being sanctified and once he makes that first step down the road to sin sin after sin after sin follows in other words what we see here is the fall of a potentially superior man in some ways angelo has many of the qualities of a tragic hero the big difference is that angelo does not meet the end of a tragic hero he meets the end of a comic hero because at the end of the play he is not given death but life let us look at what the return of the duke will be like oh it's marvelous isabella believes wrongly it turns out that her brother has been killed she has gotten the news that corrupt angelo who thinks he has corrupted her has in fact killed her brother and of course she is heartbroken she knows that in terms of morality it is just that her brother be punished but she had so hoped that he would be given mercy and charity along with justice there is plenty of room for such things particularly given the fact that angelo has propositioned her and she is in a terrible emotional state when the duke comes back and she meets the duke at the gates to the city she and mariana go there as supplicants to the duke who demand justice who are claiming that angelo has been unjust now think back to the bible of all the imagery of holy and profane cities of babylon and jerusalem well it would seem then that for a large part of the history of vienna it has been a sort of corrupt city a city of man rather than a city of god it has been a sword of babylon but this babylon will be transformed this whole world will be moved from the profane to the sacred when the duke comes back for the second time it turns out that the duke and the friar are the same person and those of you who have read the book of revelation will know that this entire concluding scene is a reprise of the book of revelation in fact god will come back and judge all of humanity and everyone in the play gets judged and not only are they judged they are given both justice and mercy here's how it works the duke comes back to the city they open the gates and angelo and escalus meet him and they give him back the symbols of authority and the duke says have it published throughout the city that if there are any who believe they have been mistreated have them come to me directly marianna and isabella come and of course mariana has actually had sex with angelo but angelo doesn't know that he believes he has had sex with isabella and isabella comes in and accuses angelo of being a hypocrite a murderer a judicial murderer a fl deflower of virgins a hypocrite an evil man in every respect and the duke now back in the city plays it very cool he said he acts as though he were merely a temporal rather than a spiritual ruler he acts as though you're really man rather than god initially says i can't believe that angelo has a wonderful reputation and reputation is so important in our understanding of human beings and our evaluation of testimony for them or against them a human judge would have been swayed by angelo's perfect reputation because he's never been known to sin before but it turns out that at the end of this play we're not going to get a human judge will be swayed by reputation we are going to get a divine judge and we are going to get perfect justice combined with mercy measure will be met with measure the duke leaves and says to escosan angelo i leave you two gentlemen in charge of this business find out who it is that has put these evil women on to uh to giving to giving out these lies about this fine man angelo and of course it's heavily ironic there's layer upon layer of irony and angelo is very very nervous because he's very close to being caught here and he thinks he's going to get over if he can hunt down the person that put these women up to this he's going to find the friar at this point in the play lucio is back now that the duke is here and it turns out that lucio says to the duke i know this friar and this fire is a very wicked man not the kind of holy man that we would expect here in vienna now earlier in the play when he'd been talking to the friar he said he knew the duke and the duke was quite a ladies man and quite a drinker and quite a carouser the idea is he is constantly saying in before the very face of god a that he knows god and b that what he knows about god is that god is immoral this is the sin of blasphemy and he blasphemes right to god's face and in the process of doing that he sets up his own condemnation after i mean we're still within this final scene the duke leaves leaves esclous and angelo in charge who makes an appearance the friar it's important for the duke to leave if the fire is going to come on stage and said the same person and now that the friar is here and lucio is the process of giving false witness against the good friar who has been trying to have people repent their sins and extending mercy and making sure that people avoid sin he goes on and on and rails against the fryer and at the penultimate moment takes the cowl off the fryer and feels very uncomfortable because there under the fryer's cowl is the duke himself and in fact it turns out that he realizes that oh no i have been blaspheming the duke to the friar i have been blaspheming the friar to the duke i'm nab now there's no way i'm going to get out from under this and at this point of course not only is he caught but as soon as the duke is uncowed and he turns out to be the same person as the friar that means that angelo knows that he's caught marianna comes in and you know explains the bed trick so he finds out that angela finds out that although he has committed sin and a vast variety of sins he has not committed the sin that he thought he had committed with isabella and now the duke is about to meet out stern justice and it turns out that he says you angelo the man that would be perfect that would usurp my power and hypocritically use your concept your alleged morality to engage in worse activities than you are condemning you deserve death but before you die i shall have you marry marianna so that she will inherit your property or entitled and that she will not be abused by you the way she had been for this many years angelo has a powerful and remarkable change of heart here angelo says i deserve it the only thing that i crave of you my lord is that you should kill me immediately i finally realize what i am and i'm forced to confront the fact that i am not the man who would be who could be perfect i thought that i could and i failed so all i merit now is death give it to me and that would be fine at that point marianna a prodigy of kindness and good nature prays to the duke please do not condemn my husband for all his faults for all his evils i love him and i ask that you grant him mercy and the duke is not initially swayed and then she says to isabella isabella lend me your knees kneel and pray ask the duke for mercy and clemency now this remembers the man that she thinks still has killed her brother this is the man that tried to suborn her into sex which she knew would cause the loss of her soul she now is in the position that she talked about in the second act she said to angelo if i were the judge and you were a supplicant to me i would extend mercy to you this is called the golden rule you will find it in the gospels now we have a turning point what will she do she kneels down she asks forgiveness for angelo she says that i thought at least in part his severity was due to the fact that he thought that he was doing right at least there is some intention here which is reclaimable i know that he meant to do wrong and i believe that he did wrong to my brother but nonetheless i ask you duke to extend him mercy the duke says yes i shall extend him mercy in fact it turns out that once isabella has been tested once we find out that she is in fact truly christian in her ethical motivations that she is willing to extend mercy to someone who would not extend mercy to her that she is willing to say yes go easy on someone that double-crossed her and killed her brother we realized that she is the true uncorrupted christian she is in fact a personification of the church in christian theology what is the function of the church but to intercede to god for us woeful sinners she also represents not just the church but if angelo is understood to represent the state what we have here is an eternal conflict between church and state where politics attempts to corrupt religion but fortunately for politics and sinful man at the end of the world religion and the church will be around to intercede and for to allow for the salvation of us corrupt immoral individuals well once angelo knows what he is and says all i deserve is death my lord i admit my sins i'm sorry and i know what i deserve and he gets prayer to intercede for him the duke says all right i'm now going to commute some sentences here you angelo you will be married to this woman and you'll transgress no more you understand who you are and what you are that will be enough perhaps we could we might he doesn't say this but angela might consider changing his name it doesn't sit very well on him he also says and you know at the end of this now that that isabella has prayed for the man who she thinks has killed her brother you see on comes claudio her brother who is still alive we have had the head switch as well as the bed switch here in comes her brother and there's a joyous reunion scene and because her brother has been engaged in fornication he has gotten this woman with child and earlier in the play the friar went to this woman and said do you repent your sins she said yes well since she's repented and claudio has been extended mercy because god's mercy and god's justice are not completely distinguishable she says you deserve death because angelo was right but i will let you slide because this is the end of the world and i am simultaneously extending both justice and mercy those two get married angelo and marianna get married and he says to isabella isabella will you consider giving up your vows as a nun will you marry me at the end of the play the duke is about to be married to isabella may i suggest that this is the end of the book of revelation this is god marrying his church which is described in the book of revelation as the bride of christ these images and metaphors do not slide into this play accidentally this is one of the most remarkable achievements of the human mind this allegory is so detailed and so remarkable that it doesn't even leave out the devil did you think that he was going to get away once the duke comes back oh no no he uncows the duke and the duke starts dealing out both mercy and justice and we have this mass marriage scene remember what i said in the beginning of the lecture the comedy characteristically ends in marriage well may i suggest that what marriage does it's the inverse of the death that we get at the end of the tragic hero tragedy individuates othello becomes othello amulet becomes hamlet because he is who he is at the end of comedy we inevitably have marriages because marriage doesn't individuate it does the opposite it reintegrates people back into society do you know the way fairy tales end and they lived happily ever after comedy has built within it a longing for eternal life comedy is the opposite dramatic tendency from the drive towards death that we see in tragedy and what could be more perfect for a christian interpretation of history that that everybody should be judged properly and understood to be a sinner and yet reintegrated into society on the basis of god's mercy which overlaps with god's justice this is an absolutely amazing theological tour de force now take it a little further the devil does not get away he does not get over here the devil while all these marriages and judgments and mercy and merciful activities are going on tries to slink off stage and it's very important that the director of this play know have someone that slinks very well and moves into the shadows because shadow and light will be very important when you're producing a play like this tries to slink over to the shadows and there's a wonderful saying because the duke knows everything remember he's yahweh he's omniscient so it's not like the devil is going to sneak off stage he says you sir i mean to talk to you i wish to have a word with you and now he can't help but come and meet his maker literally speaking deal with a duke and he says do you know the duke for a drunkard do you know the droot the duke for a woman chaser do you know the duke for a carousel and an evil man i heard you say something along those lines did i not and he says well yeah but i really didn't mean he's trying to get out from under this he says you deserve a whipping and then you deserve a hanging and i think that that would be just a fine thing for you and in addition to that i think you should get married too because in the course of the play it turns out that not only has he been frequenting a brothel but he the brother he's been frequenting he has gotten one of the uh the in this bravo with an illegitimate child she says before i hang you i'm going to whip you and before i do any of that i'm going to have you married off so that all your property goes to this and to her child may i suggest that what we have here is lucio the devil being married off to the of babylon that's what the symbolism is yes indeed the of babylon is going to be married off to lucille and he is forgiven even he gets a certain degree of mercy he has forgiven the whipping he has forgiven the hanging all he has to do is make an honest woman of her and make her child legitimate i would venture the guest that her child is named sin and this is perhaps the greatest achievement of comic r now there are many more symbolic elements that i could pull out of this when i taught this a few weeks ago at princeton with my students we pulled out at least a hundred direct references to the new testament this is saturated in christian mythology and symbolism if you don't see the christian iconography this play makes no sense at all in other words if you try and re and read it as a realistic representation of human sexual desire it's laughably bad it's got to be shakespeare's worst play if you don't read it that way and if you bring in the christian iconography this is shakespeare's greatest comedy and it is arguably the greatest comedy ever written and i'll close this treatment of shakespeare because i unfortunately am running out of time but i'll reclose it with a passage from mark which gives us the biblical resonance and explains how this final scene works out mark chapter 4 verse 24 says with what measure you meet out it shall be measured out to you and unto you that here still more shall be given the still more that shall be given is god's mercy that comes at the end of the play after god's judgment and so what we have here in measure for measure is a trinitarian christian play god the father yahweh leaves begins the world but then comes back to judge god comes back seemingly as a holy man who tells people to repent their sins in the form of the friar that's jesus and at the end of the play when god's justice and god's mercy turn out to be the same thing that's the return of the spirit because the spirit of the law is that mercy and justice are not distinguishable

Channel: Michael Sugrue

Views: 5,739

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords: Michael Sugrue, Dr. Michael Sugrue, Lecture, History, Philosophy, Bible, Western Culture, Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Id: NLkENzh_ma8

Length: 45min 48sec (2748 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020