Snack Size Shakespeare!

The second horrifying thing about that play is that Angelo is so disturbed by the fact that he was raped that he would rather just be killed than being married to Mariana (who he had pleasurable, but non-consensual sex with).

The third horrifying thing is that no one on stage finds this horrifying.

And the fourth horrifying thing is exactly what @shaxgirlsummer says - that Angelo is never talked about as a victim. He is a victim. Angelo needs to be understood as a character with a deeply, DEEPLY embedded sense of sexual shame. He is best played, I think that way, and not as some 2D villain. He thinks consensual sexual desire is scarier, and acting on it more worth punishing, than all kinds of coerceive sex and sexual punishment. That is deeply damaged.

To take that man, give him pleasure in sex, and then publicly shame him by revealing him as a rape victim? He tries to call Isabella a liar, even while she does this. He is not a perfect victim. But he is a victim.

I usually see the characters of Measure from Measure talked about like they’re all garbage. I’ve actually seen one where they all seemed filled with warmth. Where Isabella and the Duke fell in love, where Angelo was ashamed of himself, where Isabella genuinely and truly forgave him. And I think that’s a good start to how the character needs to be played.

I think the next step on playing the character is approaching him with the empathy that he is an imperfect, even disgusting, victim.

i do want to quibble, however, in a manner that i hope is productive, about your point that a "done correctly" version of measure is one "[w]here Isabella and the Duke fell in love, where Angelo was ashamed of himself, where Isabella genuinely and truly forgave him." to be 1000% clear, i absolutely love that this production was emotionally and intellectually generative for you; i just also want to offer a counter-perspective about why such a production could never work for me.

the simple reason that any production where the duke and isabella fall in love is going to have to pull out so many stops for me to even buy into that conceit in the first place, because i cannot read measure in any way except with the perspective that the duke is manipulating the story from behind the scenes the entire time. he knew exactly how harshly angelo was going to crack down on the law (his line about angelo working "in the ambush of [his] name" suggests he was aware from the very beginning that angelo was going to use the law for punishment, not justice). while i don't necessarily buy into the reading from some shax scholars that the duke also knew angelo was going to (attempt to) coerce specifically isabella into becoming a victim of sexual violence, i do think that because the duke knew angelo had a pattern of sexually abusive behavior (see: his abandonment of mariana and the false rumors he circulated about her infidelity), this information further shaped his decision to pick angelo -- worst of the worst humans -- to unjustly "enforce" the laws in his place. the duke is incredibly machiavellian ("the duke of dark corners," as lucio calls him) with respect to how he has a purposeful hand guiding every decision in this play.

(also, i think the duke is an asshole to isabella for withholding from her that claudio was in fact still alive just because he wanted her to be more appreciative of the revelation from him later on. tf, man?)

and then there's the matter of the ending, where the duke forces unwanted marriage (and the concurrent sexual expectations of a wife) upon isabella in exchange for claudio's life -- doesn't that sound suspiciously, uneasily familiar? this is the paragraph in my measure paper about this imposed marriage:

Isabella, too, faces an uncertain future, for the Duke makes her an (political) offer that I find difficult to read as anything other than (sexual) exploitation: he imposes marriage upon Isabella—marriage to him, a marriage he frames as contingent upon his pardoning of Claudio. Revealing that Claudio still lives, the Duke “proposes” to Isabella, “If he [Claudio] be like your brother, for his sake / Is he pardoned; 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.” The Duke’s switch from future tense (“will”) to present tense (“is”) suggests, on a grammatical level, that his marriage to Isabella has already occurred, and moreover the shift in person from “you will be mine” to “[h]e is my brother” reinforces that this marriage hinges upon an exchange of Isabella’s body for Claudio’s life (V.i.494-497). Many scholars have observed that “there is something familiar about this logic, the exchange of Claudio for Isabella’s person, that gives this speech a queasy sense of return to the play’s initial torpor,” and even how “[t]he Duke’s word ‘fitter’ recalls Angelo’s demand that Isabella ‘[f]it thy consent to my sharp appetite’” (Scozzaro 294). Repeating the politico-sexual manipulation of Angelo, the Duke abuses political power for implicitly sexual ends by trapping Isabella in marriage.

from isabella's side of things, there isn't a world in which i see her as wanting this marriage. this is the paragraph in my measure paper (immediately following the previous) that explains why i don't see her as desiring the duke's imposed decision:

Isabella, notably, receives no lines in the play following the Duke’s proposal that would reveal her feelings on the imposed marriage, allowing for the possibility that this ending might be staged blissfully. And yet, what Isabella ostensibly desires for herself—as inferred from her preparing to enter a convent at the play’s start—is to become a nun, not a wife. To determine if Isabella still desires such, i.e. after her experiences with moral degradation, I return to her construction as a pious subject: for Isabella, “outward bodily acts” and “inward belief” are “inseparable in their conception” and, “more importantly, belief is the product of outward practices… rather than simply an expression of them” (Mahmood xv, emphasis added). In the final act of the play, Isabella continues to invoke her religiosity, such as her declaration that “truth is truth / To th’end of reck’ning,” an echo of 1 Ezra 4:38 (V.i.50-51). Additionally, in a decision many scholars find inexplicable, when the Duke threatens to execute Angelo, Isabella pleads for him to choose mercy and spare Angelo’s life (though we may also acknowledge that this plea likely “seeks the Duke’s leniency as much for Mariana as for Angelo”) (Rackley 77). The outward pious act of seeking mercy—particularly for a man who arguably deserves no mercy for the impossible proposition he forced upon her—is, like Isabella’s desire to preserve her chastity, inseparable from Isabella’s belief in the need to protect her eternal soul. This entreaty potentially even suggests Isabella’s attempt to rectify her moral taint through an act of inimitable generosity toward the undeserving—certainly Christ-like behavior. Accordingly, Isabella at the end of Measure for Measure appears as (if not more so) committed to her pious principles as at the start, and thus—even though she is denied a dialogic response—it seems difficult to construe the Duke’s imposition of marriage onto her as anything other than unwanted. Her future, forcibly constrained by the Duke’s political power that now exposes her to the sexual expectations of wifehood she does not desire, is—like Mariana’s—fearful to imagine.

i don't want to say that it's impossible for a production to make me buy into the isabella/duke love story, but they would have to do a lot of snipping, cutting, trimming the playtext to create a version in which this marriage is wanted, not forced.

And broadly, I agree with you about the play! Like I said, I think it's gross and disturbing overall. I don't have as strong feelings about the Duke because I find him pretty incoherent. I lean towards the villainous and cruel Duke, but not as strongly as you do.

Not to get pedantic, but - in your first example "“If he [Claudio] be like your brother, for his sake / Is he pardoned;" the ":" makes this a full clause. "If this guy be like your dead brother, for your dead brother's sake is this guy pardoned." THEN "If you will marry me, his is my brother too," because "is" fits the meter and Shakespeare is a working man who cheats for meter sometimes! So I don't think the Duke is sexually coercing Isabella to marry him in exchange for Claudio's pardon.

But I do think, generally, that he's pulling one hell of a mean trick on her that just keeps going and going, and why? Like I said, I lean towards the villainous, but give me an interpretation that's coherent and consistent and believable!

The TSF production made MEASURE into revelation - by which I do mean "revealing" - for me, mostly with blocking and acting choices, rather than text trimming. It's very different from your interpretation, and it's not "mine". But I loved it! The full play is free here: Texas Shakespeare Festival Measure for Measure 2012.

Angelo really played the characters as almost obsessed his own sexual shame and self-hatred. Angelo has a couple of speeches about shame in the play, but they usually come off as self-justifying and cowardly, and here, he is...he has built a Mental Shame Trap, and he and Isabella are the mice in the Shame Trap, and he can't escape it, so he's just going to take the cheese and let her neck get broken, because he can't get out anyway. He actually tries to help Isabella up off the floor after she falls trying to escape him!! To which she is rightfully like "no, fuck you." Angelo is such a disturbing figure to me if played as more than a villain, and I guess this is where I get into "correctly" a little bit. I can find a sexual predator anywhere in media. Angelo as a mouse in his own Shame Trap is way better. (Side note: I dislike Angelo's ending a lot. This is a guy who says "everyone knows I enjoyed sex, so I'd like the death penalty, please, rather than marry my rapist." I do not believe in punishing people with sexual assault!)

The Duke is so fascinating because he is barely in control. As soon as he hears what Angelo is doing, he realizes things have gone terribly wrong. And from thereon out, these schemes that seem so cruel are sloppy, "making this up as I go", "don't look at me like that, Provost, this...yeah...this is great this makes perfect sense" plans (some good funny deliveries!) I remember looking at the Duke's face when he gets a moment alone on stage and thinking, "He is trying desperately to keep the town calm, to keep Claudio alive, to keep Isabella safe, to only reveal Angelo at the last moment, and things keep popping up out of nowhere and he is exhausted and he doesn't know if he can do it." I stil thought all his plans were terrible, but I understood them! And I understood the Duke as a person and not a puppet master.

For Isabella and the Duke - Isabella obviously rejected Angelo's touch. When she meets the Duke, he is constantly in a comforting proximity, and that becomes a closer distance as they get closer. Since they're working together, they're always turned towards each other, checking with each other, getting physically closer in proximity. As the Friar, he finally begins to take opportunities to touch her - hugging her, kissing her forehead, etc - that are welcome. He holds her while she cries for Claudio, and he looks heartbroken. And when they get the letter that the Duke is returning to town, she throws her arms around him.

So when the Duke proposes, she is silent is shock, then throws her arms around him again and kisses him, because she already is so comfortable with him.

And you know what happened then?

The second horrifying thing about that play is that Angelo is so disturbed by the fact that he was raped that he would rather just be killed than being married to Mariana (who he had pleasurable, but non-consensual sex with).

The third horrifying thing is that no one on stage finds this horrifying.

And the fourth horrifying thing is exactly what @shaxgirlsummer says - that Angelo is never talked about as a victim. He is a victim. Angelo needs to be understood as a character with a deeply, DEEPLY embedded sense of sexual shame. He is best played, I think that way, and not as some 2D villain. He thinks consensual sexual desire is scarier, and acting on it more worth punishing, than all kinds of coerceive sex and sexual punishment. That is deeply damaged.

To take that man, give him pleasure in sex, and then publicly shame him by revealing him as a rape victim? He tries to call Isabella a liar, even while she does this. He is not a perfect victim. But he is a victim.

I usually see the characters of Measure from Measure talked about like they’re all garbage. I’ve actually seen one where they all seemed filled with warmth. Where Isabella and the Duke fell in love, where Angelo was ashamed of himself, where Isabella genuinely and truly forgave him. And I think that’s a good start to how the character needs to be played.

I think the next step on playing the character is approaching him with the empathy that he is an imperfect, even disgusting, victim.

i do want to quibble, however, in a manner that i hope is productive, about your point that a "done correctly" version of measure is one "[w]here Isabella and the Duke fell in love, where Angelo was ashamed of himself, where Isabella genuinely and truly forgave him." to be 1000% clear, i absolutely love that this production was emotionally and intellectually generative for you; i just also want to offer a counter-perspective about why such a production could never work for me.

the simple reason that any production where the duke and isabella fall in love is going to have to pull out so many stops for me to even buy into that conceit in the first place, because i cannot read measure in any way except with the perspective that the duke is manipulating the story from behind the scenes the entire time. he knew exactly how harshly angelo was going to crack down on the law (his line about angelo working "in the ambush of [his] name" suggests he was aware from the very beginning that angelo was going to use the law for punishment, not justice). while i don't necessarily buy into the reading from some shax scholars that the duke also knew angelo was going to (attempt to) coerce specifically isabella into becoming a victim of sexual violence, i do think that because the duke knew angelo had a pattern of sexually abusive behavior (see: his abandonment of mariana and the false rumors he circulated about her infidelity), this information further shaped his decision to pick angelo -- worst of the worst humans -- to unjustly "enforce" the laws in his place. the duke is incredibly machiavellian ("the duke of dark corners," as lucio calls him) with respect to how he has a purposeful hand guiding every decision in this play.

(also, i think the duke is an asshole to isabella for withholding from her that claudio was in fact still alive just because he wanted her to be more appreciative of the revelation from him later on. tf, man?)

and then there's the matter of the ending, where the duke forces unwanted marriage (and the concurrent sexual expectations of a wife) upon isabella in exchange for claudio's life -- doesn't that sound suspiciously, uneasily familiar? this is the paragraph in my measure paper about this imposed marriage:

Isabella, too, faces an uncertain future, for the Duke makes her an (political) offer that I find difficult to read as anything other than (sexual) exploitation: he imposes marriage upon Isabella—marriage to him, a marriage he frames as contingent upon his pardoning of Claudio. Revealing that Claudio still lives, the Duke “proposes” to Isabella, “If he [Claudio] be like your brother, for his sake / Is he pardoned; 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.” The Duke’s switch from future tense (“will”) to present tense (“is”) suggests, on a grammatical level, that his marriage to Isabella has already occurred, and moreover the shift in person from “you will be mine” to “[h]e is my brother” reinforces that this marriage hinges upon an exchange of Isabella’s body for Claudio’s life (V.i.494-497). Many scholars have observed that “there is something familiar about this logic, the exchange of Claudio for Isabella’s person, that gives this speech a queasy sense of return to the play’s initial torpor,” and even how “[t]he Duke’s word ‘fitter’ recalls Angelo’s demand that Isabella ‘[f]it thy consent to my sharp appetite’” (Scozzaro 294). Repeating the politico-sexual manipulation of Angelo, the Duke abuses political power for implicitly sexual ends by trapping Isabella in marriage.

from isabella's side of things, there isn't a world in which i see her as wanting this marriage. this is the paragraph in my measure paper (immediately following the previous) that explains why i don't see her as desiring the duke's imposed decision:

Isabella, notably, receives no lines in the play following the Duke’s proposal that would reveal her feelings on the imposed marriage, allowing for the possibility that this ending might be staged blissfully. And yet, what Isabella ostensibly desires for herself—as inferred from her preparing to enter a convent at the play’s start—is to become a nun, not a wife. To determine if Isabella still desires such, i.e. after her experiences with moral degradation, I return to her construction as a pious subject: for Isabella, “outward bodily acts” and “inward belief” are “inseparable in their conception” and, “more importantly, belief is the product of outward practices… rather than simply an expression of them” (Mahmood xv, emphasis added). In the final act of the play, Isabella continues to invoke her religiosity, such as her declaration that “truth is truth / To th’end of reck’ning,” an echo of 1 Ezra 4:38 (V.i.50-51). Additionally, in a decision many scholars find inexplicable, when the Duke threatens to execute Angelo, Isabella pleads for him to choose mercy and spare Angelo’s life (though we may also acknowledge that this plea likely “seeks the Duke’s leniency as much for Mariana as for Angelo”) (Rackley 77). The outward pious act of seeking mercy—particularly for a man who arguably deserves no mercy for the impossible proposition he forced upon her—is, like Isabella’s desire to preserve her chastity, inseparable from Isabella’s belief in the need to protect her eternal soul. This entreaty potentially even suggests Isabella’s attempt to rectify her moral taint through an act of inimitable generosity toward the undeserving—certainly Christ-like behavior. Accordingly, Isabella at the end of Measure for Measure appears as (if not more so) committed to her pious principles as at the start, and thus—even though she is denied a dialogic response—it seems difficult to construe the Duke’s imposition of marriage onto her as anything other than unwanted. Her future, forcibly constrained by the Duke’s political power that now exposes her to the sexual expectations of wifehood she does not desire, is—like Mariana’s—fearful to imagine.

i don't want to say that it's impossible for a production to make me buy into the isabella/duke love story, but they would have to do a lot of snipping, cutting, trimming the playtext to create a version in which this marriage is wanted, not forced.

Love and forgiveness and a benevolent Duke is not the “correct” way to do MEASURE and I do not think that

I was going to correct you for saying I used that language, but you are correct, I used it!

I think it’s a gross and troubled play and did not expect the version that I saw.“Measure is a confusing text and the Duke is a confusing character, so if a play is really trying to get me to believe he’s benevolent, fine I guess I’ll try” was my general attitude.

In the Texas Shakespeare festival, of all places, they showed me how to make you buy it if done correctly. Not just the Duke, but the Isabella‘s love for him and the sense that the play could really be about justice and forgiveness.

Mostly by acting and directing choices, too! Not by cuts!

If that’s your approach, the TSF did it CORRECTLY, because it was consistent and believable.

Horatio: I swear to God, I didn’t know the sword was poisoned, or I never would have let him do it. I loved him. I would have followed him anywhere. There is some providence in the fall of a sparrow, fine, if it be not now then it is to come, yes, I know. But it wasn’t now, not for Hamlet, not yet. I don’t forgive Claudius and for that matter, I don’t forgive Laertes either. I know this is a Protestant university and I know I should not say this, but I do not care, and I do not care if I damn their souls. They took Hamlet from me. And I wanted to follow him so badly, but he is my Prince, and he told me not to. And I would not be here now, except once that I discharged my duty to him, I had nowhere else to go.

If that wasn't bad enough, every "translation" into modern English I have ever found has, rather than trimming, completely removed all the nectar from it, and handed me a pile of soil that is so utterly boring I can't get through it.

Shakespeare was meant to be watched. And a large part of his original audience was workers. They paid like, a dime to come and stand and watch, and the alternative most popular entertainment was bearbaiting (animal cruelty). These are people with maybe a 5th grade education, at most.

They didn’t understand everything being said either!!

I was going to recommend the version of the plays that got me into Shakespeare when I was 12. And I can, if you like! It was a good enough translation to set me on a 25 year love affair with Shakespeare!

This is BARELY even homoerotic subtext. The only “sub” really at work here is Aufidius under Martius. This is just text!

And by GOD, all hail Hadley Fraser. So many productions of display want to pretend that somehow this is NOT super super gay, and Aufidius is not saying “let’s bone let’s bone, I see poundtown with you in my sleep every night, you’re hotter than my wife.” But Fraser feels it and plays it. That is a man who is more than horny. That is a man who is a little bit in love.

This is the part where I fangirl about Luke Thomspon’s portrayal. The pause, the denial, the fake composure, the soft, broken “where?” 💔

The second horrifying thing about that play is that Angelo is so disturbed by the fact that he was raped that he would rather just be killed than being married to Mariana (who he had pleasurable, but non-consensual sex with).

The third horrifying thing is that no one on stage finds this horrifying.

And the fourth horrifying thing is exactly what @shaxgirlsummer says - that Angelo is never talked about as a victim. He is a victim. Angelo needs to be understood as a character with a deeply, DEEPLY embedded sense of sexual shame. He is best played, I think that way, and not as some 2D villain. He thinks consensual sexual desire is scarier, and acting on it more worth punishing, than all kinds of coerceive sex and sexual punishment. That is deeply damaged.

To take that man, give him pleasure in sex, and then publicly shame him by revealing him as a rape victim? He tries to call Isabella a liar, even while she does this. He is not a perfect victim. But he is a victim.

I usually see the characters of Measure from Measure talked about like they’re all garbage. I’ve actually seen one where they all seemed filled with warmth. Where Isabella and the Duke fell in love, where Angelo was ashamed of himself, where Isabella genuinely and truly forgave him. And I think that’s a good start to how the character needs to be played.

I think the next step on playing the character is approaching him with the empathy that he is an imperfect, even disgusting, victim.

macbeth: but not like that

hamlet: if you’re in a duplicitous violent world, your king and your peers and your girlfriend may lie to you, so only follow the advice of your steadfast best friend

othello: but not like that

as you like it: if you undergo a misfortune that causes you to hate your life in your city, give yourself a makeover and run away to the woods

timon of athens: but not like that

two gents: if you’re in love in italy, you can quickly and easily communicate important information via the verona postal service

I, TOO DEMAND MORE!!!

I myself humbly offer this fanfic, which is part of a series of anecdotes involving the abused Lear and Gloucester kids: Now Gods, Stand Up for Bastards

I’m planning at least one more fic for a younger Edmund and Edgar that will involve Edmund having been whipping boy for Edgar (you knoooow Gloucester would do that) and one involving an adult, post-canon two with this dialogue exchange:

Edgar: is there anything I can do to get you to forgive me?