Comment on Shakespeare's conclusion to 'Measure for Measure'

Rebecca Johnson

11TD

Comment on Shakespeare’s conclusion to ‘Measure for Measure’

The Shakespearean play that I am going to study is ‘Measure for Measure’ which was performed for King James I on December the 26th, 1604. The text of Measure For Measure was not published until 1623, seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is a play written about intensely complex issues, including the uses of morality and sexuality.

The play consists of five acts with many scenes showing different aspects of the play and these scenes and different extracts eventually are the basis for the ending of the play. The general plot of the play is that firstly the Duke decides to go away and leaves Angelo in his place for a period of time. As his first order of business, Angelo sentences Claudio to death for impregnating his girlfriend Juliet. Before being imprisoned, Claudio entreats his good friend Lucio to relay his misfortune to his devoted sister Isabella. There is a specific law inn the play which was a law dooming any man to the punishment of death, who should live with a woman that was not his wife; and this law, through the lenity of the duke, being utterly disregarded, marriage became neglected, and complaints were made every day to the duke by the parents of the young ladies in Vienna, that their daughters had been seduced from their protection, and were living as the companions of single men. Claudio disobeys this law by sleeping with Juliet and so receives imprisonment and awaits a death sentence from Angelo. Angelo is attracted to Claudio’s sister, Isabella, therefore he asks Isabella to sleep with him in return for her brothers release. Isabella refuses, believing it would be a greater sin to relinquish her chastity than for her brother to die. The Duke disguises himself as a friar; therefore he can learn personal things about Isabella. He offers his help when he over hears Angelo’s proposition to Isabella, the Duke manages to convince Mariana, Angelo’s discarded fiancée, to substitute for Isabella. Under the cover of night, Angelo sleeps with Mariana, thus committing the same crime for which he is executing Claudio. The Provost substitutes the head of a dead pirate for Claudio and takes the proof to Angelo. Meanwhile, Friar Lodowick arranges to return to Vienna as the Duke and summons Angelo to greet him before the city gates. He also requests the aggrieved women to petition him at the gates for justice. However the next day despite Angelo’s promise to Isabella he stills issue her brother’s execution. Friar Lodowick reveals his true identity to the Provost to prevent Claudio’s execution. The Duke manages to convince the provost to substitute the head of a dead pirate for Claudio and then send the head to Angelo to show that the deed has been done. Little does Angelo know that the Duke is stringing him along, ready to shock him at the end in the last act. After provoking much humiliation in the major players, the Duke marries Angelo to Mariana, reunites Claudio with Juliet and proposes to Isabella. I will now explain how the conclusion to the play and characters in the conclusion are relevant to the whole play and why Shakespeare ended the play like this.

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In the final act of ‘Measure for Measure’ there is dramatic evidence that the characters have changed since the beginning of the play for the better. Angelo is firstly portrayed as a saintly person, but when he takes the Duke’s place his ruthless nature is exposed and the way Lucio describes Angelo as having ‘snow broth’ blood implies that he is cold blooded. The audience are supposed to dislike him when he sentences Claudio to death, and most of all when he asks Isabella to sleep with him as he contradicts the fact that he feels so strongly about obeying the law. As well after he has slept with Mariana, thinking it is Isabella, he continues to go ahead with to killing Claudio ;therefore the audience continues to think the worst of him. The Duke surprises Angelo at the end of the play when he reveals his true identity and at this point he that the Duke has been a secret witness of his cruel deeds, and he says 'O my dread lord, I should be guiltier than my guiltiness, to think I can be undiscernible, when I perceive your grace, like power divine, has looked upon my actions. Then, good prince, no longer prolong my shame, but let my trial be my own confession. Immediate sentence and death is all the grace I beg.' The way that he refers to the duke as God is ironic, as God will have actually been watching all the time just like the Duke was. The means in which Angelo confesses and accepts that he has got to die makes the Duke feel sorry for him and he forgives Angelo, providing he maintains his marriage contract to Marianna. When the Duke is forgiving, he enforces the audience to look at Angelo in a different light, and Angelo’s character develops in a moral way.

Another character who has changed is the Duke and he has been rewarded because of it. At the beginning when he dressed up as a friar to find out more personal details in people’s lives, he overheard about Isabella’s problems and wanted to help. This is interesting because he may have not have wanted to help her out of politeness; he probably was ardently attracted to her at first sight..' The Duke hopes to be rewarded for his help at the end by asking Isabella to accept his proposal of marriage whose virtuous and noble conduct had won her prince's heart. He says 'Give me your hand, Isabel; for your lovely sake I pardon Claudio. Say you will be mine, and he shall be my brother too.’ Shakespeare has not included her reply to this offer; therefore it would be the director’s decision of the play to resolve what reaction Isabella should express. The director would come to a decision whether Isabella would withhold a discontented expression in which she could be portrayed as being somewhat uncertain about her response. However if the director chose for Isabella to immediately portray a joyful expression, the audience would conclude that Isabella would accept. Either way the audience can scrutinize the stage directions to decide in their own minds, whether it is a happy or sad ending.

Isabella is another character who changes towards the end of the play in the sense that she is closer to her brother, Claudio, once she realises that her brother is more important. At the beginning she was willing to bestow Claudio’s life so that she could keep her virginity, which she considered exceptionally more important. The quotation '0 were it but my life, I would lay it down for your deliverance as frankly as a pin!' indicates that if she was in Claudio’s position she would surrender her life without question and is an insinuation of her selfish way of thinking. The Duke helps Isabella and arranges for Mariana to go to Angelo in her place. Isabella love for Claudio is implied when she goes to Angelo, to plead for his freedom and when she discover from the Duke that, 'Angelo has released Claudio from this world. His head is off, and sent to the deputy.' The much-grieved Isabella cries out 'O unhappy Claudio, wretched Isabel, injurious world, most wicked Angelo!', which suggests her anger towards Angelo for his deceit. The Duke does not tell Isabella the truth, because he wants her to realise the consequences of her actions. Isabella discovers the reality at the end of Act Five and the audience can assume that she will be emotional, because of her regret of not sleeping with Angelo, hence placing her brothers life at risk.

The Duke adopts a specific role in the play, which is one of Friar Lodowick. He goes to see friar Thomas and explains that, he wants to privately return to Vienna, habited like a friar, with the intent to watch the unseen the conduct of the saintly seeming Angelo and to examine how they cope with Angelo’s enforcement of the long-neglected morality laws. Angelo refers to the Duke a Christ figure towards the end of Act Five in the line ‘like power divine hath looked upon my passes’. This suggests that he sees the Duke as being extremely powerful like God is and is the only person who has the power to forgive him of his trespasses. At the end when the Duke is not disguised anymore he still continues to think in a religious manner, this is shown by the way that he says ‘death for death’, as this is a reference from the bible whereby the old testament says ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, this also highlights the title of the play.

There is a good use of stagecraft throughout the play as the use of disguise is pioneered. The three characters that withhold a disguise are the Duke, Mariana and Claudio. Mariana wears a veil when she goes to confess that Isabella could not have slept with Angelo as she did. Mariana is the first person to be revealed in Act five and at first she refuses to show her face and conveys this to the audience by saying ‘I will not show my face until my husband bid me’. The audience would immediately assume that she is seeing Angelo as her husband, because when Angelo enters and says ‘lets see thy face’ she reveals her identity. When the Duke asks Angelo how he became acquainted with Mariana, Angelo has to explain that he was once ardently attached to her, but when her brother died and she was left almost penniless he did not want to marry her. Another reason for Mariana been dismissed by Angelo, because of her reputation for kissing other gentlemen.

The Duke conceals himself as a Friar and the entire way through nobody suspects that he is the Duke, because of his well-made disguise and his crafty disposition. The Friar accuses Claudio of speaking insulting words about the Duke to him and at this point Lucio is deceived, because he doesn’t know that the Friar is actually the Duke. Lucio pulls the Friars hood off, because he becomes frustrated at the fact that the Friar is speaking the truth, the Friar is then revealed as been the Duke. This exposure of identity causes a lot of commotion, because throughout the play the Dukes absence has been falsehood as instead of going away he had adopted a friar’s disguise and had used this as a weapon at the end.

Another character who is in disguise is Claudio, when he enters muffled at the end of Act Five, as he is still under imprisonment. This final revealing is significant, because this is when the Duke had made Isabella believe that her brother was dead. The reason for him doing this was because he wanted her to see how important her brother is to her and how she made the wrong decision by choosing her virginity over her brother.

There is a moral in the play which is ‘think before you act’ and this is illustrated throughout the play by some of the main characters. Isabella does not in actual fact think about her decision on whether she will give her virtue in exchange for her brothers life, Claudio does contemplate the punishment when he slept with Juliet, Angelo does not think when he asks Isabella to sleep with him, and Lucio does not think about what he says when he abuses the Duke. All of these characters in these sections incorporate harsh deeds without considering the consequences. However all of these characters learnt their lessons in Act Five.

The tone or mood of the play is varied, as it has comic and serious connotations that are seen in different parts of the play. The comic sections occur mainly when the Duke is revealed, as prior to this Lucio had been malicious about the Duke to Friar Lodowick, who was actually the Duke disguised. Similar humor is also conveyed at the beginning of Act five as Lucio accuses the Duke who is still disguised as a friar of offending the Duke. The sections that are serious are when Angelo accepts his death sentence for his contrary ways, as this shocks the audience and causes them to sympathize him rather than continuing to hate him. There is also a romantic section when Marianna and Angelo eventually join in matrimony, when Claudio and Juliet are reunited and the Duke when he proposes to Isabella.

I think that Shakespeare wrote this end in this format, because he did not want the audience to be satisfied completely, in the way that he wanted to leave them dwelling on what happened and also leave a moral issue to make the audience think about the play with an open mind. The play leaves a debate on whether the characters will have really learnt their lessons and this ending may also suggest life doesn’t always have fairytale endings which insinuates a certain amount of truth. Shakespeare only has issues seeming like they are resolved, because he would have wanted the audience to feel happy that everything had concluded agreeable, but also leave them with a sense of doubt on how happy the ending truly is.

In Act Five there are quotations that are significant as they refer to the title of the play. These are spoken by the Duke wherein he says ‘ Her worth, worth yours’, and ‘what’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine’. These quotes suggest the balances in married life, which have to be evenly balanced for it to be respectable and decent.