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

Matrimony and Recompense in nib for peak(A version of this essay appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (Winter, 1995), 454-464.) Since 1970, when the Isabella of John Bartons RSC production of Measure for Measure premier shocked audiences by silently refusing to acquiesce to the Dukes offer of wedding at the end of the play, Isabellas response (or lack thereof) to the Dukes proposal has become mavin of the most prevalent subjects for Shakespearean performance criticism.See, for example, Jane Williamson, The Duke and Isabella on the Modern Stage, The Triple 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 textual matter and Performance (London Macmillan Education, 1986). However, attention to this issue has tended to overshadow another ambiguous aspect of the same stage sequence the question of why 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 part until the moment of his proposal, but the plays stage news report reveals a pattern of attempts to supply what the text lacks, either through stage business or interpolated declarations of love. Hal Gelb notes, Critics and directors have so keenly felt a brain of the marriage 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 wellhead that Ends Well, SQ, 22 1971, 31). These attempts, based on a culturally specific conception of matrimony as prompted by erotic desire, disregard other textually prominent motivations for marriage grounded in Renaissance moral, social, and financial concerns. Ann Jennalie Cook, comparing contemporary notions of marriage to those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, writes, Despite the romantic ideas expressed in plays and poetry, most marriages were contracted 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 prerequisite to insure that both parties could live securely until death. Marriage was also viewed as the safest outlet for the healthful discharge of sexual appetites.