3.1
We begin with the duke dressed as Fr. McFake-y Priest visiting Cluadio who tells him
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I've hope to live, and am prepared to die.
Within the ugliness of this play there is so much hope and so much fighting for life. and that makes me truly love it, challenging and strange as it is. The duke doesn't seem to be such a big fan of hope:
Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,
ok, that's actually a pretty fair thing to tell Claudio. Life is just a breath and I would add to his conjecture that only fools and VILLAINS go out of their way to keep it unnaturally. I'm kind of on board with this... except he KEEPS GOING until 37 lines later we all just want him to stop talking, and things have gotten disturbing and graphic, and luckily Isabella comes in to create something new in the scene. It's worth noting that she enters with a gorgeous greeting I'd like to take up/ maybe put above the entryway of the door to my home:
Peace here; grace and good company!
Beautiful. The duke acts like he's going to leave the two alone, but really he goes to the provost and says:
Bring me to hear them speak, where I may be concealed.
So he eaves drop on the entire rest of the conversation. I'm interested in the various ways to stage this and if we see him creeping on Isabella and Claudio somewhere or if we only know from his line to the provost that he's listening in but don't actually see his reactions until he comes back on stage and how that changes the feel of the scene... Isabella begins to tell Claudio the situation but only in vague, veiled ways, and we have this little exchange:
CLAUDIO
The prenzie Angelo!
ISABELLA
O, 'tis the cunning livery of hell,
The damned'st body to invest and cover
In prenzie guards! Dost thou think, Claudio?
If I would yield him my virginity,
Thou mightst be freed.
The term "prenzie" seems to continually cause a deal of textual confusion but whatever it means, it sure is fun to say. And of course, once Isabella comes out and tells Claudio what she is being asked to do we get this:
CLAUDIO
Thou shalt not do't.
ISABELLA
O, were it but my life,
I'ld throw it down for your deliverance
As frankly as a pin.
CLAUDIO
Thanks, dear Isabel.
(that's another moment where the colloquial sound and the short, straightforwardness of the line just tickles me. Once the situation really sinks in for claudio, though, he begins to back pedal a bit....
Yes. Has he affections in him,
That thus can make him bite the law by the nose,
When he would force it? Sure, it is no sin,
Or of the deadly seven, it is the least.
So... now Claudio wants Isabella to maybe consider angelo's offer. I love the idea of ranking lust on the seven deadly sins. It makes me wonder how I view them/rank them. maybe i should think on that as it would probably tell me a lot about my own weaknesses....
anyway, Claudio then has a GORGEOUS monologue full of poignant images and incredible sounds,
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod...
... 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
That speech makes me wish someone would write a scene where Claudio and
Hamlet hash out these life/death thoughts and fears. (OK, I get it, if
i'm going to keep requesting scenes be written I better get to it and
write them myself... I'll start making a list and work on it, ok?) Anyway, Isabella does not enjoy Claudio's speech as much as I did, and as quickly as he turned his answer about her compromising with Angelo, she turns on him:
Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
Things continue to be a bit heated between the siblings until the Duke comes back in and separates them. He tells Claudio:
Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her... I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true; therefore prepare yourself to death: do not satisfy your resolution with hope
that are fallible: tomorrow you must die
So... he lies to Claudio. about confession. irony. then when claudio wants to smooth things over, the duke just sends him away and moves on...
CLAUDIO
Let me ask my sister pardon. I am so out of love
with life that I will sue to be rid of it.
DUKE VINCENTIO
Hold you there: farewell.
Then he uses his priest disguise to get the provost to leave him alone with Isabella.
Leave me awhile with the maid: my mind promises with my habit no loss shall touch her by my company.
Anyone else's logic think...hmmmm... his habit is a lie of what he is... i wonder how this is going to go... luckily, the duke just speaks with Isabella. and it is here that he says one of my favorite little lines:
Have you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea?
It's SO GOOD! Like OH! Major plot point we weren't going to introduce till now! and it just reminds me of the Julio Romano line in Winter's tale. I just... I love it. The duke then brings up that Angelo was betrothed to this woman and left her (something no one mentioned while they all praised him high and low or you know when the duke decided to leave him in charge...) And then he goes on to explain his plan of using a bed trick. I love that shakespeare seems to KNOW how SKETCHTASTIC bed tricks are and so any time someone has an idea to use them they have to elaborately explain them as well as list half a dozen reasons why it's right to go ahead and go threw with the trick....
refer yourself to this advantage, first, that your stay with him may not be long; that the time may have all shadow and silence in it; and the place answer to convenience. This being granted in course,--and now follows all,--we shall advise this wronged maid to stead up your appointment, go in your place; if the encounter acknowledge itself hereafter, it may compel him to her recompense: and here, by this, is your brother saved, your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged, and the corrupt deputy scaled.
See audience? If it was just one of those reasons I could see why you would be uncomfortable but look how many reasons we have to get this guy to think he's sleeping with someone else! And WHAT COULD GO WRONG with our sketchy plan? (Hmmmm... I would be thinking of several horrible things that could make this plan unravel fast) Isabelle does not seem to have any qualms about what the priest/duke has just suggested- maybe just b/c she's used to trusting priests? who knows...
The image of it gives me content already; and I
trust it will grow to a most prosperous perfection.
3.2
Back to the lower classes....Elbow is bringing pompey to jail for his trade. and i'm running out of time so we'll go quikcly:
you will needs buy and sell men and women like beasts
The duke seems to suddenly be behind a model of restorative justice instead of retributive justice:
Take him to prison, officer:
Correction and instruction must both work
Ere this rude beast will profit.
Lucio, not knowing the priest he's talking to is actually the Duke, tells us all how he REALLY feels about the Duke being gone:
LUCIO
It was a mad fantastical trick of him to steal from the state, and usurp the beggary he was never born
to. Lord Angelo dukes it well in his absence; he puts transgression to 't.
DUKE VINCENTIO
He does well in 't.
LUCIO
A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in
him: something too crabbed that way, friar.
This poor town has the goldilocks problem with rulers. too lenient or none at all. Which is too bad because clearly the choice for JUST RIGHT would be Escalus...
Moving on, we have Lucio's wonderful line:
Why, what a ruthless thing is this in him, for the rebellion of a codpiece to take away the life of a man!
the rhetoric in this play is seriously amazing. and in case you were missing alliteration, here's the line for you:
The duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered;
Lucio continues to dig his hole deeper and deeper until he leaves and Mistress Overdone enters on HER way to prison with even more dirt against Lucio:
My lord, this is one Lucio's information against me.
Mistress Kate Keepdown was with child by him in the
duke's time; he promised her marriage: his child
is a year and a quarter old, come Philip and Jacob:
I have kept it myself; and see how he goes about to abuse me!
Keep that information in mind for later.... and Escalus, still upset about Claudio says:
Claudio must die to-morrow: let him be furnished with divines, and have all charitable preparation. if my brother wrought by my pity, it should not be so with him.
Provost
So please you, this friar hath been with him, and advised him for the entertainment of death.
So... thanks to the Duke's disguise, this condemned man will not get any actual last rights. super.
The end of this scene is particularly strange (and also, I believe, where most people put intermission) because the Duke is the only one left on stage and he changes his meter and begins to rhyme. as if he's using fairy talk or doing some kind of incantation.
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
I love that with his holy vestments he is embodying what he warns against in that line. That's Act 3. only the 2 scenes. No post tomorrow as I will be celebrating my BIRTHDAY (and taking time out from early modern plays to go see Our Town- my favorite play of all time.) but expect act 4 soon.
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