girl, pen: #MyPlayToday ... Measure for Measure

#MyPlayToday ... Measure for Measure

By Anonymous 05:44

First impressions of the draw: Was a visual one - I have very vivid memories of the BDSM style set from the one time I have seen Measure in performance.

Had I read the play before? No

Had I seen the play before? Yes

Vienna's seedy streets housed me for the day (actually, for yesterday on account of the late-finishing York Mystery plays, but more on those later). I had been an intrigued admirer of Measure for Measure from afar; having seen a wonderful production at the Swan which sparked my interest in this slinky, sly play. My fascination in the play was caught not least by the fact that Jodie McNee's Isabella was wearing the exact same shoes I had on (16 year old me felt oh-so metatheatrically complicit). More than this, however, the moral and sexual tensions of the play that were introduced to me by this production were as attractive and they were intimidating.

Perhaps that's why I had never actually picked up the beast to read. I was not surprised that my favourite scenes of performance, those between Angelo and Isabella, retained that original gunpowder essence which makes them ignite on stage. One of my favourite lines comes from these scenes, not for it's poetic value but for it's dramatic potential and for it's spotlight into a dark corner of gendered power relations, Angelo's spine-chilling:

'Who will believe thee, Isabel?'
MM 2.4.156

Is there a more concise and biting snapshot of the play's moral landscape than that question? The theatre nut in me revels that that one line has the potential to be the pivotal joint of the whole play, where Isabella's moral framework begins to dismantle and Angelo's power grows increasingly heedless.

A special segment of today's post, largely for my own remembrance, is going to be entitled: 'Times Angelo is Totally Comparable to Shakespeare's Other Male Characters'. It's like a 'Where's Wally' but with dramatic and canonic intertextuality:

'What's this? What's this? Is this her fault or mine?'
MM 2.2.163

Angelo adopts some of the frenzied (or should I say 'prenzie') syntax of Leontes' 'Too hot, too hot'.

'heaven hath my empty words'
MM 2.4.2

Like Claudius in Hamlet, Angelo's efforts at praying sincerely are just not up to scratch.

'They say this Angelo
was not made by man and woman after this
downright way of creation'

MM 3.2.113-5

Angelo and Coriolanus are chilling together in the super-human section of Shakespeare's characters.

What did surprise me reading the play was the pretty painful comic scenes. The momentary and stifled effort to make Elbow seem a Dogberry-esque fool, the extenuation of comic material whose tone grows increasingly agitated and sour. Of course, we are used to the tone of comedy turning bitter in Shakespeare; Malvolio being the example which springs to mind. But, in Measure for Measure, the process of that turn from laughter to pity is simply underdeveloped and leaves the comic scenes relishing of neither. I realised when reading today that it's not only the comic 'structure' of Measure for Measure that sits so uncomfortably with the play's anti-comic content, but also it's tangible effort to squeeze some (really rather poor) comic content in there.

'Well, heaven forgive him, and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.'

MM 2.1.37-8

Just as the play tries to shift itself unconvincingly into generic conventions, so too my expectations of the play were challenged and some of the results left me a mixture of fulfilled and disappointed. My reading day happened to be the anecdote - reading in the beautiful Gatehouse Coffee, discussing Shakespeare and poetry with my wonderful friend Noor was a welcome removal from the play's atmosphere of overwhelmingly putrid morality. The play's implicit religious themes and morality ambiguity was also complemented and contrasted by my evening of theatre; watching the epic Mystery Plays in the York Minster. By 'epic', I mean almost four hours which is (albeit happily!) the reason for this delayed post.

One entirely random thought/question the play inspired of me today: Is there a more bare-arsed deus ex machina than Ragozine's death? Come on, even the Duke points out that it's an unbelievably fortunate device.