1. G. Wilson Knight, "MM and the Gospels" Wheel of Fire, reprinted in Signet
1. plays theme: judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgemnt ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Mt. 7:1-2
2. allegory rather than probability is what counts
1. Isabella=sainted purity
2. Angelo=Pharisaical righteousness
3. Duke= pyscholgically sound and enlightened ethic
4. Lucio=indecent wit
5. Pompey and Overdone=professional immorality
6. Barnardine=criminal insensitiveness
3. general topic ethics, focussed on sexual ethics
1. contrast between consciousness and instinct; civilized and natural
2. closenss of bestial and divine
4. Duke is enlightened [=progressive, liberal; gospel ethic]
1. controls action; allots praise and blame, lit with divine suggestions
2. suffused with divine mystery
5. Orthodox atmosphere of judgement and ritual--fear of next world; Duke as Friar, but basically Gospel foregiveness wins out
1. the value of mercy, of not judging--in Isabella's pleas, 2.2 as in Mt 7
2. also in MV 4.1.
3. Mt 6:12--forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
4. justice is a mockery; man himself a sinner, cannot presume to judge
6. intercriticism of persons--all react in ethical manner to one another
7. [Knight] the Duke's plan [161-164]
1. to unmask self-conscious, self-protect righteousness
2. sets reins on Angelo (1)
1. to make his virtues either give light unto the world--out from under a bushel--1.1.26-40 and Mt. 5:14-15 and talents parable Mt. 25:14-15
2. (2) to crack down on moral license, which he doesnt want to do
1. he's been too permissive and lax
2. people wouldnt understand his reversal; need a new government to be effective
3. to test Angelo's moral perfection: "if power changes purpose/what our seemers be"
4. [Isnt there a conflict between these motives?]
5. [reforming the city intention soon gives way to cleaning up the mess that's been created as well as "teaching" lessons]
8. the Duke
1. above all other strifes, contended to know himself 3.2.235
2. he's no weakling but he cant punish because he recognizes passions and sins in himself and because he cant tolerate execution without criminal's own approval [how does this relate to Angelo's desire to die and the Duke's insistence of Claudio and Juliet accepting their punishment willingly?]
1. cf. Barnadine 4.3. 68
3. Godlike like Prospero
1. like dramatist controlling chessmen 165
2. compared to God 5.1.369
3. couplet tetrameter speech at 3.2.264-mystical prophetic tone
4. like Jesus, the prophet of a new order of ethics
1. [despite the fact that they have already failed?--or as an effort adapt the the actual observance or non-observance of The Law]
5. cryptic self ID of the Friar: 3.2. 217: not of this country, I am a brother/ of gracious order, late come from the See/In special business from his Holiness.
6. cryptic report on "news abroad" 3.2.217
1. there is so great a fever on goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it: novelty is only in request. [staleness; need for change?]
2. not clear if Duke is for or against change, at any rate a generally prophetic critique
7. sententiae: Put not yourself into amazement how these things lshould be: all difficulties are but easy whenthey are known
1. Mt. 10:26 for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
2. authority of teacher exercized--to Juliet on repentance
1. [but Angelo is also sententious, as are Pompey and Lucio; and though he persuades Claudio to affirm death, Cl. immediately changes his mind, when Friar leaves]
3. after rebuking Pompey sternly but not unkindly he concludes: go mend, go mend; like Jesus to the woman taken in adultery: go and sin no more (John 8:11)
8. like jesus, moves among men suffering freif at their sins and deriving joy from...simple goodness--the Provost 4.2.88, as Jesus with centurion Mt 8:9
9. Duke goes from worldly power, through prophecy and moralizing to judgement
9. Duke and Claudio
1. Discourse on death: 3.1
1. life is a dream; good and evil are intertwined--"it's life and life only"
2. Claudio: I humbly thank you. ...let it come on."[cf. Job] Hamlet: let be; readiness is all. He "will encounter darkness as a bride" like Antony and Hamlet--readiness is all; ripeness is all
3. Claudio reverts back to orthodox fear of death--as does Hamlet
4. [what's outcome of Duke's instruction of Claudio?--although he begs Isabella to save him and incurs her wrath, when the Duke says that Angelo was just testing her and he doesnt have a chance to live, he becomes reconciled and asks for death 3.1.175]
10. Duke and Angelo
1. His virtue is untested, as he half recognizes 1.1.47
2. never feels the senses, 'but doth rebate and blunt his natural edge/with profits of the mind, study and fast." 1.4. 57
3. doesnt "know himself"
4. in conversation with Esc. refuses to acknowledge his participation in sin
5. Ang. falls prey to his own love of purity and asceticism
1. 2.2.178
2. he "sins in loving virtue"--I disagree; I think he sins in wanting to violate virtue; Isabella's and his own
6. He understands what he never could before, how men could be fond 2.2.185
7. He has a violent struggle in 2.4. between prayer and thought, but immediately succumbs again to desire, finding his virtue is tedious and boring
8. Sexual desire has long been anathema, so his warped idealism forbids any healthy love; good and evil change places in his mind; the devil becomes a "good angel"; love becomes a devouring and curbless lust: 24.159
9. instincts take over from moral reason and eliminate it; he's conscience striken and terror struck, like Macbeth; but he vacillates internally--4.4.22--we would and we would not--learns about inner conflict
10. Angelo: symbol of false intellectualized ethic divorced from the deeper springs of human instinct. 176
1. [manifested in monasticism and authoritarianism]
11. All is resolved in judgement of the final act--trumpet call
1. punishment=reward: to know oneself
2. Lucio
1. eloose minded wit; enjoying the the unnatural ban on sex becasuse that very ban adds point and spice to sexual gratification
2. talks sense about this 3.2.103; also Pompey
3. but sincerely concerned about Claudio--loyal to him but betrays whores and bawds and lies to Duke/friar
4. He assumed the Duke was lenient because he was guilty himself
5. Like Barnardine, he doesnt take death seriously; Duke gives him whimsical punishment, just like Angelo, who'd welcomed death over marriage--they dont get what they think they want
3. Isabela
1. even lucio respects her saintliness
2. she's cold in her brother's defense and cold to brother
3. contrast Lucio's beautiful lines 1.4. 40-44
4. [she needs Lucio's coaching to plead for her brother; contrast to her persistence against Duke in pleading for angelo in V]
5. preferring her chastity to brother's life, she begins to act like a fiend and refuses to make sacrifice.
1. Ill pray a thousand prayers for thy death, no word to save thee
2. what is sacrifice--cf. Abraham
6. at end she prays for Angelo's life warmly; she's moved from sanctity to humanity 182
1. his passion thawed her--like Edmund?
4. Angelo
1. once revealed he welcomes punishement
2. apologizes to Escalus
3. exposure is a relief--first time he honest with himself and the world; admits that he refused Mariana for her reputation of levity
1. [this explains something of her song and moated grange]
5. Duke has found that his leniency was correct
1. Provost, Overdone, who took care of Lucio's illegitimate child, are the heros 3.2.202
2. [this would mean that he moves toward humanity, by experiencing desire and connection and wanting marriage]
12. the moral is of love, which transforms both the just and the unjust--just like Gospel. Parable of Unmerciful Servant Mt. 18) Two Debtors in Luke 7; sublime strangeness and unreason of Jesus' teaching. 185
2. The 'meaning' of Measure for Measure by Clifford Leech
1. deconstructs single consistent meaning; goes for theatrical effects and local meanings in play
2. Elizabethan age of transition, "birth pangs of thenew order often induced doubt of old presmise and new practise"..."independent minds, ever ready to scrutinize an accepted code; in TC the rad. values of Hektor and Ulysses are seen as unavailing in a world given over to disorder"
3. spokesmen for orthodoxy...repel us by their actions and manner of their speech...to shifty, too complacent, too ignorant of their own selves
4. several inconsistencies in text; why look for consistency in orthodoxy
5. Battenhouse: Duke is 'the Incarnate Lord"; Eliz. Pope: "an embodied Providence"
6. No hint of Xtian consolation, just distaste for life itself
7. Raleigh point out how the Duke plays at cat and mouse with Angelo in the last act and indeed his supreme indifference to human feeling is as persistent a note as any in the play.
8. Duke undergoes no conversion to exercise of mercy--he does so "because he has not the strength to be severe and because he enjoys the contiving of a last-minute rescue.
1. still outraged by the manner of Viennese life, as at begining of play 5.1.318-24
2. object in abandoning ducal fuc tion ws that the law should be exercised with greater rigor; yet at the end all are forgiven
3. intensity of Duke's spite against Lucio
9. "Duke of Dark Corners:
1. He is indeed like Prospero in this, who pretends sorrow for Alonso's loss of his son, and then extracts a stage-manager's thrill from the sudden discoverythat ferdinand is safe." C. Leech 69
2. But mystification is his ruling passion. He sends "letters of strange tenour" to Angelo, hinting at his own death or retreat into a monastery 4.2; he gives Angelo a sense of false security at beginning 5.1...The he orders Isabella to prison, Call Mariana 'thou perciious woman," and then in his Friar's disguise, thells them both tht their casue is lost. Later he lamets with is. tha he was not able to hinder Claudio death...
10. Sh's mind not working at full pressure in this part of the play
11. comment on the admin of justice: instruments are Abhorson and Elbow, Pompey; little pleasure in assertion of law; Shakespeare on the horror of execution
12. complexity of meaning; no one interpretation works
13. Isabella would rather think her mother a strumpet than her father Claudio's begetter..cult of chastity.
3. Nevill Coghill, " Comic Form in MM" Shakespeare Survey 8 1955
1. director, Chaucer translator, Langland afficionado
2. The Aldous Huxley reading [Lucio centered]--cf. MHH
1. expect to see Duke mouthing with a beggar of fifty
2. Lucio will be spokesman
3. atmosphere
4. the marriages at the end will be loathsome
3. He supports opposite Xtian readings of Battenhouse etc.
1. is this Jonsonian or Dantesque comedy: Satire of lowlife or story of transformation and redemption.
2. interpret play in full range of Dantean medieval allegory: literal, moral, allegorical[applies to everyone], anagogical
3. "Shows a human world in an eternal situation, not a series of abstracdtions in a contrived predicament..."
4. Like Clerk's Tale, a story of human testing, trial or assay, seen in relation to both God and man.
1. Reasons for testing: Sermon on the Mount__Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven
1. Dukes words at opening
2. Pictures the world as a place where all are continually liable to tests that they may show their virtues [doesnt make sense since they fail the tests, and only end up passing through the manipulation and control of the Duke--Schleiner's view]
3. Testing Angelo
1. Duke knows at start about his desertion of Mariana at the start
2. He fails test of decent governor with Escalus and Pompey
3. He keeps falling deeper and deeper
4. Testing Isabella
1. she resists his offer, she resists lying to brother, but she lacks charity--opposite to Job or Griselde
5. Testing Claudio
1. His cardinal virtue of fortitude is strengthened by the duke's preaching on death but he falls after talking to Isabella, but he could not hold onto it. "Down he went at the thrid stepl like St. Peter when he left the boat and tried to walk on the waters. He does not drown because the Duke steps in to save him with a white lie...it sets teh stricken Claudio upon his feet again." 20
6. Juliet's put to the test and passes
7. Pompey is brought to admit his trade of pimp "does stink in some sort"
8. Barnardine?
9. Overdone reveals natural charity
5. The Duke--[very like the tester in Clerk's Tale; controversial indeed]--as is God in Job
1. The tester
2. like God on "anagogical plane"
3. God as spy: "God is about my path and about my bed and pieth out all my ways." Psalm
4. "what is important about the bedtrick is not what happens to Mariana but what happens to Angelo." 22
1. makes Angelo just like Claudio, so that Measure for Measure speech works at the end
2. not sensible to focus on fact that Duke is lying, but rather that he is calling for the same treatment for both
3. [What about the Duke's development--a la prospero?]
4. [Does Jesus develop?--I think so]
6. Lucio
1. assume he's foul mouthed liar and adversary to Duke
2. Lucio gives us reason to think that he knows all the time who the Friar Duke is--discovered in the course of producdtion by Actor.
1. in 1.4 he tells Isabella he has contact with "nerves of state"
2. in 3.2 he challenges Friar and says Duke usurped beggary he was never born to; then "I know what I know."
3. [This would mean that each knows the other is lying]
4. he's never tempted but Duke's adversary and mocker; instrument by which Isabel and Angelo are led into temptation.
5. His tone is like Satan of Job
6. Makes a joke of unmasking Duke, who then unmasks him
7. This encounter ends with comic and forgiving mood.
8. A joyous ending
7. Back to question of genre--
1. In comedy the obstacles are chance and nature and error and humors. "Can there be happiness for a world bursting with sin and misery? Must Evil always end in Tragedy"
2. final words: O felix culpa! O necessarium peccatum Adae!"
3. [cf. Gospel as tragic comedy--back to my proposal]
4. Louise Schleiner: Providential Improvisation in MM
1. God or Devil
1. Christian rehabilitation: Duke as God--Battenhouse, Wilson Kinght, RW Chambers, Neville Coghill
2. Scepticial view: Duke as sinister and pathetic
2. "sh's most theological play" --biblical allusions most prominent, most explanatory; from the title on down
3. thesis: NT references are ironic--duke attempts to imitate God he is not God
1. as rulers were supposed to, he tries to imitate god in justice and mercy.
4. [Schleiner] he is a man of tests, modelled on the absentee master figure in a large group of parables from the synoptic gospels
1. parables of man planning a journey or absence called in servants and gave them responsiblitiels: wicked vineyard tenants Matt. xxi 33-43; wicked steward Matt xxiv. 45-51; traveler and doorkeeper (Mark xiii, ee-37; master absent at a wedding Luke xii, 35-39; the talents Luke xix 11-27
2. master leaves servants are tested and to be rewarded
3. spec. referenece: 1.1.38-42
4. Angelo and escalus are servants
5. searching out and supporting the right and good is his leading trait
6. moral correction--which we dont accept from politicians or clergy, but only from psych. and doctors
7. he tests Angelo, Isabella and minor characters and determines appropriate judgments
8. reward to provost 5.1. 530-31 echoes MT xxv.21
9. his test results prove so disucouraging that they force him to imitate another aspect of NT God--legal astuteness of the Pauline God, who in the atonement 'found out a rememdy," a kind of divine lawyer's trick,for guilty man
10. this explains the plays falling in half--his schemes are imperfect and comical improvisations that aim to bring the characters to their best selves
11. drives for food , drink, sex and comfort challenge the authority of the duke and deputies
1. climaxed in Barnardine
12. tests Caludio, Juliet, Pompey, etc.
5. Afer testing and observing he must devise a remedy for the failures
1. only apparantly absent; he returns to try to rescue each major character from most destructive impulses of his or her own nature
1. "Angelo from the first gush of his long repressed sexuality" 229
2. Isabella's naive spiritual pride broken less brutally than rape
3. Claudio for holding out for bigger dowry while secretly enjoying Juliet as his wife
2. craft against vice speech concluding Act III answers Angelo's "give my sensual race the rein" at end of II
3. "finding out remedy" is what Christ did, says Isabella 2.2.73-9; remedy presents itself to Duke 3.1.198
4. this is the secret disguise of HV, Mach, Basilikon Doron, etc. --perform the old contracting with a disguise
5. Mariana as substitution--like X
6. NB: "the atonement too was "craft against vice," god in disguise as man paying the devil's false exacting, a divine trick to get off the guilty defendant." 230 [love of trickery throughout Bible--Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Biblical bedtricks of many sorts, Jesus the trickster at all times--tone of Matthew; reader is in on the joke; pharisees, etc. are not
7. Angelo is seen as Puritan predestinarian by Claudio and Escalus--and others--whose bestowal of grace and punishment is random and arbitrary
8. "if Duke playing God the tester seems a moral usurer, if Angelo playing God the judge sounds tyrannous (even before his lust), the duke and Isabella soliciting Mariana to play Christ the substitute victim give off a whiff of procurement." 232--pattern works ironically
9. same is true with Duke at Judgement day--at the final judgement or assertion of authority; he's undermined by the bawdy self serving interjections of the goats
10. all assertions of divine authority are undermined by erasing of Ten Commandments, and other human drives which ignore his authority; old Adam gives tit for tat/ Measure for measure to Duke's effort to reform, Christian ruler trying to imitate God.
11. there is no clear winner or loser in this battle 233
12. this is a critique of James efforts to reform the body politic--even with use of the secret power of the magician
6. Question about her thesis
1. In trying to imitate God's efforts to reform men and carry out his planned destiny for them, failing to imitate God and falling back to be a human ruler, or is he imitating God's failure with man, chronicled in the Bible, along with the substitution trick itself as a last remedy. Schleiner is unclear--at least in my notes
5. Anne Barton MM: introduction in Riverside Sh.
1. play exhibits "sense of dissatisfaction with its own drmatic mode, concentrated in its notoriously difficult final scene, and a predominant harshness of tone...obsessed with the idea of death
2. doctrinaire Xtian interpretations: Duke=God; Isabella the soul; Lucio=Satan. unactable and reductionist
3. Shakespearean comedy is generaldeeply distrustful of absolutes...Angelo [like Malvolio] ...suspect from beginning...plunges into depravity, Isabella merely into hysteria and intolerance.
4. Both undergo painful education...Angleo humiliated and exposed befoere everyone; Isabella brought to urgin another woman to behave like Juliet, and also consents to make in public a false declaration of her own loss of virginity. [NB!!] arrived at a new and juster knowledge of herslef...of a world of comrpomise and imperfection.
5. Vienna is corrupt but energetic...When Angelo ...and Escalus , as justices, try to set it right, the y become enmeshed in a web of detail...Escalus has to turn Pompey loose, knows how to deal with him next time, and has uncovered the scandal of the payoffs that enable householders to let Elbow take their jobs. Vienna needs more magistrates like escalus, not draconic inhyuman lawus.
6. Anne Barton's objections
1. Duke: not Xtian Providence
1. delivered up authority to suspicious man in order to avoid responsiblity for reactivating harsh statutes
2. false friar, playing uopon credulity of vicitims
3. scientific curiousity as to how they'll behave under stress [Job]
1. devises special tests for their weak points
2. torments Isabella
3. bed trick is less legitimate than Claudio's contract
4. error and miscalculation in his plot
5. Duke is embarrassed by Angelo's betrayal and insistence on Claudio's head; comes up with false solution; Barnardine insults him and walks out; Provost solves the dilemma [is this like Escalus taking over for Angelo in the prunes scene?]
6. Reality is more unpredictable and insubordinate than the Duke suspects; his efforts at scripting are frustrated and he responds with rearrangements and patchings; Lucio refuses to get off stage; Lucio keeps deliberately diverting or interrupting the Duke's schemes, especially at the end. [But he also functions as an instrument of the plot and brings it forward--is this Puck? Falstaff, Satan?
1. could this be an analogy for God's plan with creation getting thrown off immediately by Adam and Eve and their descendants; his efforts to provide strict law--Mosaic covenant--to get it back in shape; the even worse failure of that approach? And then the use of substitutions to make it finally work out?
7. Duke refuses to admit failure, but Sh. perversely seems to stress the hollowness, in a sense, the falsehood of the happy ending of this comedy
1. Fairy tale devices following highly realistic probings [Matthew?]
2. No basis for love between Duke and Isabella
1. Believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom. 1.3.2-3
3. he asks Isabel to "be mine" at worst possible moment--when Claudio is restored beyond her hope [maybe; last we heard she prayed for his death]
4. Neither Angelo nor Isabela state acceptance of the marriage
2. Other objections
1. there is no N. Frye "new society' at the end of this comedy [what does Frye say on this?]
2. Mariana exists only for the sake of the plot; she's absolutist in her devotion--unappealing [like Griselde or Job or Abraham]
3. Isabella's argument for Angelo is illogical: she says her brother "had but justice" while Angelo didnt do what he intended to. But sleeping with Mariana on a precontract is what he did--the same crime--[does this mean she too is lying--applying craft against vice?]
4. Confusion of values--desperate and deliberate [what about in Gospel?]
1. laws of heaven and earth are conmpatible 2.4.50
2. conflict between religious and secular law
3. absolutes and anarchy
4. sterile order and teeming individualism
5. Conclusion: Shakespeare disillusioned with the art of comedy
7. Sources of the Bed Trick--Peggy Munoz Simonds SQ 34.4. w83. 433-4
1. "basic device in the cultural tradition of Western civ. to provide for the conception of a divine child who must be born into the world of man."
2. Gen. 38--Judah and Tamar--providential intention realized; story famililar to Boc. who wrote source of All'sWell.
3. Bedtrick also act of providence in genealogy of Brit. kings in Malory
4. Hercules conceived by Zeus' bedtrick--Jupiter sneaks into Alcmeme's bed in place of husband Amphitrion. Hercules is classical forerunner of X.
8. Sarah C. Velz, 'mans Need and God's Plan in MM and Mark IV
1. Four seeds in parable of sower correspond to Angelo, Claudio, Lucio and Mariana
1. Lucio-- a kind of burr
2. use of fertility and growth vs. sterility imagery in the play in general supports this
2. [Velz] Duke's plan as analogue to God's plan
1. X separates himself from the people
2. Both aware of and in command of dangerous situations, though it seems unconcerned
3. both test subordinates whom they have recently raised above multitude
3. theme of human frailty--
1. all men good or bad are equally weak by comparison with deity and equally in need of Gods' providential mercy--cf. isab. 2.2.73
2. discussed with levity by lowlife in subplots
1. all do offend
2. Luico on human nature
3. true men and theives in same clothing (Abhorson)
4. [Velz] Both have a plan for human salvation "above man's reason"
1. cf. Job/Griselda story
2. have to conceal themselves to fulfill their plans
3. may seem to be tormenting their subjects unnecessarily--X allows his disciples to suffer while storm rages--"yet it is only de profundis that man can realise his finetenss and thereby acknowledge his dependency on higher benevolence
4. Is. at moment of deepest grief and desire for revene, is stirred to generosity of forgiveness which had not been possible for her earlier when faced by Claudio's request.
5. 'Iwill keep her ignorant ofher good,/To make her heavenly comforts of despair/When it is least expected. 4.3.106...
6. he speaks against her 'tis aphysic/that's bitter to sweet end 4.6.6
5. [Velz] Imagery of light and darkness
1. there is nothing hid that shal not be opened; neither is there a secrete, but that it shall come to light [Mark 5.22]
2. Lucio says to the Duke "the Duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would never bring them to light" (3.2.165) that's just what duke is doing.
3. Idea that evil will out controls the plot
6. [Velz] Dramatic irony
1. Chist as parabolist is of necessity an ironist, since the stories he tells the crowd have only literal meaning to his listeners, while his chosen disciples are later shown a figurateive and personal application...further level of irony...those who hear the meaning of the parable are imperfect and in need of divine help
2. Disguise is central ironic device...like parable underlines the limits of human percpetion, and even when his real identity is revealed his subjects have nto yet discovered the extent of his power to save Claudio or redeem Angelo
9. Roy Battenhouse: MM and the Christian Doc. of the Atonement
1. Xtian interps: CJ Sisson
2. The Atonement story [get this confirmed by Herbert and Donne]
1. sovereign disguises hmself to visit people and reform them
2. Lord condescends to become brother
3. Acting incognito he sows within their hisotry the processes whereby they may be reconciled to him in a just and ahppy kingdom.
4. By taking form of servant he is able to mingle intimately in his peoples affairs, discover their herts, prevent and remove sins, intrude wise and far-reaching counsels , and direct all lthings toward a great Last Judegment whenhe shall appear with power to establsih peace.
5. Setting: disorder in the world, resulting from abuse of freewill
6. Ruler wants not punishment but non-tyranical restoration of order
7. Benevolence of ruler--who will try to undertake a remedy for ills he cant overlook.
3. plot is contest between Law and Grace, both having authority from the Lord
1. Grace is friar or brother
2. brings comfort and shriving and encouragement and a plot to save Isabel from fallen angel
3. commits them to Friar Peter until his coming again
4. When he comes in judgement all things undergo apocalpyse
5. NB: apparent last [sinners] are first and first last [saintly]
6. Grace: "like power divine" says Anglo
7. invocation and intercession of saints
8. reference to atonement story: "Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;/and he that might the vantage best have took/Found out the remedy" 2.2
1. sought out a means for circumventing his own just claim
2. Mariana's voluntary yet sinless humiliation of herself
1. relation between motive and act is interesting here too
2. as in Isabela' final pleading
3. laying down her body is as sowing of a tithe; fulfills the promise of satisfaction (III,1)
4. [Is this a parody of The Sacrifice]
9. Th unfolding star calls up the shepherd...announcing advent...it'll be OK; biblical, apocalyptical ring
10. Idea of ransom--paying debt; this is what Angelo calls for--cf. MV; opposite of self-sacrifice or non quantitative equations
11. Angelo as Adversary to Vincentio
12. Many defenses of the bedtrick
1. justice of y our title to him/doth flourish the deceit
2. the doubleness of the bnefit defends the deceit from reproof
3. convinces Isabel to lie: "for vailful purpose"
4. deception is "aphysic that's bitter to sweet end."
5. This is the Jesuit doctrine of equivocation
6. justification from scripture--pious fraud NB
1. Rahab, Jacob, Hushai [Absalom]
7. Paul: Christians are mne who approve themselves ministers of God"by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report; as deceivers yet true" [2 Cor. vi:4-10
13. Overall plan
1. law increases sin--Angelo's and Isabela's and Claudio's
2. directs a strategy [of head substiution]by which both Ang. and Claud. are redeemed from the curse of the law. Reform is acheived without almighty fiat
14. Atonement as divine romance between Christ and church--in the Apoc. he's a bridegroom warrior; overcome the beast and marry the bride
1. Like the Jewish Church, isabela must be enlarged.
2. When he approaches her, Vouchsafe a word, oung sister, but one word, she replies, "What is your will
3. He courts her like chivalric love--secret appointments; secrecy and love; secrecy and politics; secrecy and spirituality
4. her humility toward her master at moment she recognizes him; she's been made plaible; experience has taught her how to love
15. various popular stories of a soverign in disguise are but secular analogies of the Xtian Incarnation, while the stories of sbustituted bedmates are equally secualr analogies of the substitutionary At-one-ment.
4. Allegorical names
1. Claudio: the lame one
2. Mariana: bitter grace
3. Angelo: minsiter/ deputy; angel
4. Vincentio=leader; Victor or conqueror; Lodowick=famous warrior
5. Thomas is doubting friar
5. Angelo=Saul the Pharisee
1. divided against himself
6. comments:
1. Jesus story:
1. He comes to bring teaching andhealing; warn people about the coming judgmenet and make them repent, like prophets; he's welcomed by some, not fully understood by them, and attacked by others. At a certain point he recognizes he'll have to die--because they are after himand because in order to complete his mission he must sacrice himself for their sins since they wont reform. He also decides to leave representatives behind when he departs from the world.