Measure for Measure
Directors Notes

MEASURE FOR MEASURE is one of several plays that are referred to as Shakespeare's "Problem Plays." What's the problem? Everybody knows what a good play is, right? Sure we do! But when we place our template for "Good Play" over the top of the "Problem Plays," they seem messy: the characters don't behave the way we think they're supposed to, the endings don't quite work and we can't manage to pigeon-hole them into convenient categories like "Comedy," "Tragedy," "History" and "Romance". I prefer to think that the problem is not with the plays, but with the interpreters.

Shakespeare was apparently not much impressed with standard categories. He even made fun of them in HAMLET, at about the time he was writing MEASURE FOR MEASURE: "The best actors in the world either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral... "

Most people make the mistake of thinking of MEASURE FOR MEASURE as a standard "good triumphs over evil" story. It seems, under our standard template, as if that's what the story is trying to be. It is easy to mistake the Duke for "the Good Guy," since he is so full of pleasant and profound aphorisms. Angelo is quickly identifiable as an "Arch-Villain" and Isabella as the "Virtuous Victim." Unfortunately, we must make all manner of excuses to justify their behavior in the roles they seem to want to play. That's a problem.

We have chosen to take a different tack and believe we have discovered something much more consistent and compelling. We propose that the play is really a black satire on the Puritanism that threatened to destroy the lusty, rowdy lifestyle of Elizabethan England. The Duke, instead of being "The Good Guy", is an echo of the Puritan God that would create men and women with irresistible desires, make laws against succumbing to those desires, threaten them with eternal torment for doing so, then playing the kindly father figure when he forgives them. Angelo and Isabella, instead of being "evil" vs. "good", are simply human, both trying desperately to find spiritual purity through the denial of their physical selves, but discovering through each other the "monsters," "beasts," and "cowards" that lie within us all.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE examines religion and politics on a remarkably intimate level through the subjects of sex and death. Angelo tries to wipe out lechery in Vienna, believing that he has so thoroughly conquered his own desire that he is justified in executing those who have not done the same. Isabella is about to join a convent to avoid the world of men, and would rather have her brother die than give up her virginity. Claudio is to be beheaded when the woman he loves becomes pregnant out of wedlock; she is to bear his child as a widow.

The title of the play is MEASURE FOR MEASURE, and the play acts as a kind of balance or scale, with the Duke manipulating everyone and acting as the fulcrum. Characters and ethics are tossed together onto the scales on either side, causing the story--and the characters--to shift violently between reason and passion, spirit and carnality, drama and comedy.
Constables and criminals, nuns and whores, gentlemen and rogues--all have their turn on the scale to help us examine the subtle differences between virtue and morality; honor and pride.

Most of the imagery in the play is sexual--sometimes hilariously so. When the Duke tries to convince the Friar that his motives are pure, he says, "Believe not that the dribbling dart of love / Can piece a complete bosom. Why I desire thee / To give me secret harbor hath a purpose / More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends / Of burning youth." When Angelo finds himself tortured with desire for Isabella, he calls it "the strong and swelling evil of my conception," and when he imagines how she might speak against him, he says, "How might she tongue me!" As Claudio prepares to die, he paints this picture: "I will encounter darkness as a bride and hug it in mine arms." And Isabella, when stating as clearly as possible that she would rather die than give up her chastity, chooses this image: "Were I under the terms of death, / The impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, / And strip myself to death as to a bed... / Ere I'd yield my body up to shame." Clearly, everyone has sex and death on the brain.

But this is only the common ground on which Shakespeare's scrutiny of mankind is played out. Sex and death are the given. How people respond to them is what is important.
We hope that our exploration will provide a bold new look at this intriguing play. We dream that it may offer an unexpected reflection of the universal in the surface of the personal. Shakespeare understood, and Angelo himself admits, "We are all frail."

- Scot Whitney

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