The scene begins with Angelo and Escalus meeting the Duke in public and the Duke giving over the top thanks for all of their service/Angelo's goodness:
O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it, To lock it in the wards of covert bosom, When it deserves, with characters of brass, A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion.
and of course that is Isabella's cue to correct this high praise. The theme of the day is: repetition. How often its repeated, where, etc. How many acting opportunities are missed by people who repeat things in the same way instead of giving them a different weight/motivation every time?! If you want to practice repetition, this is the perfect scene to do it, especially with Isabella's lines:
Justice, O royal duke! Vail your regard Upon a wrong'd, I would fain have said, a maid! O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye By throwing it on any other object Till you have heard me in my true complaint And given me justice, justice, justice, justice!
More repetition plus fun with homonyms:
Hear me yourself; for that which I must speak Must either punish me, not being believed, Or wring redress from you. Hear me, O hear me, here!
And then we up the repetition stakes by using Angelo's own word and throwing it back in his face
ANGELO
And she will speak most bitterly and strange. ISABELLA
Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak: That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange? That Angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange? That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator; Is it not strange and strange?
OK, can we talk about how creepy and perfect the term "virgin-violator" is?! I LOVE that Isabella gets to use this incredible and bold language. Then Isabella ups her repetitive rhetoric with some good ol' polyptoton
It is not truer he is Angelo Than this is all as true as it is strange: Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth To the end of reckoning.
So now she's walked rhetorical circles around the mostly silent Angelo but obviously everyone thinks her accusation is still unlikely, to which she asserts:
Make not impossible That which but seems unlike: 'tis not impossible
Add that to sayings we should use in our theoretical Shakespeare etsy store, ok?! because it is beautiful. and something we should remember. The duke now acknowledges Isabella's stunning use of language and reason-
If she be mad,--as I believe no other,-- Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, Such a dependency of thing on thing,
Amid this tense scene, Lucio decides to speak up and give us some much needed comic relief. Thank Shakespeare for Lucio!
DUKE VINCENTIO
You were not bid to speak.
LUCIO
No, my good lord;
Nor wish'd to hold my peace.
DUKE VINCENTIO
I wish you now, then;
Then, poor Isabella, the priest that brought her here seems to turn against her. All part of the duke's strange and twisted plan:
I have stood by, my lord, and I have heard Your royal ear abused. First, hath this woman Most wrongfully accused your substitute, Who is as free from touch or soil with her As she from one ungot.
Isabella is taken away and Mariana starts to testify but all in riddles, as bed tricks are wont to make a person speak in. Lucio again comes to the comedic rescue:
DUKE VINCENTIO
Why, you are nothing then: neither maid, widow, nor wife?
LUCIO
My lord, she may be a punk; for many of them are neither maid, widow, nor wife.
Mariana continues the riddle talk but at least makes Angelo known as the one she is talking about:
MARIANA
Why, just, my lord, and that is Angelo,
Who thinks he knows that he ne'er knew my body,
But knows he thinks that he knows Isabel's.
ANGELO
This is a strange abuse. Let's see thy face. MARIANA
My husband bids me; now I will unmask.
Shakespeare is obsessed with veils and unmasking. I always think those kinds of moments are funny, but I love them none the less. Then the duke mysteriously disappears leaving the proceedings to angelo and escalus, and returns as the priest, where he speaks in the kind of language that is always a dead give away that there's a prince or someone of power/vested interest disguised:
Be not so hot; the duke Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he Dare rack his own:
Seriously. Everyone should be aware of this kind of turn of phrase b/c it is used ALL THE TIME by people in disguise and it SHOULD give them away yet never does...
Once Angelo realizes he is caught, he has a pretty lengthy confession, self-inflicted judgement:
I should be guiltier than my guiltiness, To think I can be undiscernible, When I perceive your grace, like power divine, Hath look'd upon my passes. Then, good prince, No longer session hold upon my shame, But let my trial be mine own confession: Immediate sentence then and sequent death Is all the grace I beg.
Grace... a key theme in the play.... but the duke just cares about getting angelo and marianna married. Of course this has to happen offstage for reasons I explained in my As You Like It post
Go take her hence, and marry her instantly. Do you the office, friar; which consummate, Return him here again
Once Angelo is married the Duke threatens to have him put to death almost immediately thereafter, and gives a little rhyming speech that hits the audience hard with the title of the play (in case you were wondering, the capitalization was done by the website I take the quotes from. it just emphasizes my point though...)
'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!' Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE.
Mariana asks Isabel to appeal to the duke several times, to show the mercy to angelo that was not shown to her brother. and I think this is the most moving part of the play. to see the forgiveness, desperation, and grace shown by these two women. mariana's speech is lovely and the tension of whether or not Isabel will take her side is wonderful.
Isabel,
Sweet Isabel, do yet but kneel by me;
Hold up your hands, say nothing; I'll speak all.
They say, best men are moulded out of faults;
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad: so may my husband.
O Isabel, will you not lend a knee?
After we decide Angelo won't die, in comes a whole mess of people including Claudio "muffled"/disguised, Juliet (some productions dont include her. others have her still super pregnant. others have her with a baby. these choices are wildly fascinating to me.) and Barnadine. And the Duke, having learned nothing from his time disguised/ his self admitted need to be a bit harsher on the law and still not understanding how to walk a middle ground when it comes to justice tells Barnadine:
Thou'rt condemn'd: But, for those earthly faults, I quit them all; And pray thee take this mercy to provide For better times to come.
So not only is Barnadine not going to die today, but apparently he's totally forgiven. Also, let's unmuffle claudio and shock isabella/hope she doesnt ask why she was deceived this whole time and put through the hell of thinking he was dead:
If he be like your brother, for his sake Is he pardon'd; and, for your lovely sake, Give me your hand and say you will be mine. He is my brother too: but fitter time for that
(additional problem to add to this problem play: what if the dude that comes out as "claudio" is not actually claudio? I once heard a scholar suggest that and it totally blows my mind to think of the implications and awesomeness/darkness of that performance choice.) What I love in that speech is the midline change of "but fitter time for that" which indicates to me that the duke's proposal is not going well/Isabella does not seem pleased or at least not willing to say yes right then and so he has to change his tactics. And he does. and eventually he gets to punishing Lucio who as a lovely line accepting his consequences:
If you will hang me for it, you may; but I had rather it would please you I might be whipt.
a fair desire/reasoning. but poor lucio is married to a whore on top of all his other condemnation and seems to get one of the worst fates int he play. The duke then tries to wrap everything up with some semblance of order:
She, Claudio, that you wrong'd, look you restore. Joy to you, Mariana! Love her, Angelo: I have confess'd her and I know her virtue.
Again- CREEPY that he ministered sacraments when he is not a priest. really upsetting. and now we come back to the proposal:
Dear Isabel,
I have a motion much imports your good;
Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline,
What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine.
So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.
[Exeunt]
Now, the common reaction to that as the end of the play is... WHAT?!?!? Isabella never gets a line to respond to the proposal so there are SO MANY CHOICES to play with! Does she run into his arms, a clear acceptance? If so is the audience on board b/c we are taught to believe that marriages = happy endings? or deeply disturbed that this lying twisted man is going to marry the woman we've been cheering for? Or does she run for the convent? Or does she look in horror? IS she paralyzed realizing that due to his power she's more or less trapped in an angelo like blackmail only this time there's marriage along with the sex instead of just the sex? I thought I'd heard every theory on the end of the play until my friend Alex let me know about the ending of the production at the Goodman Theatre
(Picture above is from the Goodman Theatre's Facebook page) In this production, which closed in April so I don't mind spoiling their original ending, the play ended with a crazy disco dance at the end of celebration while Isabella looked to the audience as if she was trying to decide what to say to the proposal, only to have the recently pardoned Barnadine COME UP AND STAB HER. and that was how the play ended. I find this choice kind of amazing.
What do you think? How would you deal with Isabella's silence/ the end of this problem play?
Let me know. I could talk about this play for hours.
Next up: Comedy of Errors. WOO!
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