Matrimony and Recompense in Measure for Measure :: Shakespeare Measure Essays

Matrimony and Recompense in pulsation for footmark(A version of this canvas appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (Winter, 1995), 454-464.) Since 1970, when the Isabella of John Bartons RSC production of account for Measure first shocked audiences by silently refusing to acquiesce to the Dukes offer of conglutination at the end of the play, Isabellas response (or lack thereof) to the Dukes proposal has become unmatched of the most prevalent subjects for Shakespearean performance criticism.See, for example, Jane Williamson, The Duke and Isabella on the Modern Stage, The deuce-ace Bond Plays, Mainly Shakespearean, in Performance, ed. Joseph G. Price (University Park Penn State UP, 1975), pp. 149-69 Ralph Berry, Measure for Measure on the Contemporary Stage, Humanities Association Review 28 (1977), 241-47 Philip C. McGuire, Speechless Dialect Shakespeares Open Silences (Berkeley U of California P, 1985) and Graham Nicholls, Measure for Measure Text and Performance (London Macmill an Education, 1986). However, attention to this issue has tended to overshadow another(prenominal) ambiguous aspect of the same stage sequence the question of wherefore the Duke asks Isabella to marry him in the first place. It is generally agreed that the text provides no evidence to suggest a romantic attachment to Isabella on the Dukes persona until the moment of his proposal, but the plays stage history reveals a pattern of attempts to furnish what the text lacks, either through stage business or interpolated declarations of love. Hal Gelb notes, Critics and directors hurl so keenly felt a sense of the conjugal union as a tacked-on after-thought that they have sought ways to prepare it earlier in the play (Duke Vincentio and the Illusion of Comedy or Alls Not Well that Ends Well, SQ, 22 1971, 31). These attempts, based on a culturally specific conception of conjugation as prompted by erotic desire, disregard other textually prominent motivations for hymeneals grounded in R enaissance moral, social, and financial concerns. Ann Jennalie Cook, comparing contemporary notions of marriage to those of the 16th and seventeenth centuries, writes, Despite the romantic ideas expressed in plays and poetry, most marriages were contract on the basis of interest rather than affect. Society demanded a legitimate male heir to preserve the family name and properties. Moreover, the financial arrangements of a marriage settlement were essential to insure that both parties could live securely until death. conjugal union was also viewed as the safest outlet for the healthful discharge of sexual appetites.