Read William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition Online

Authors: William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (381 page)

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B1. First Version of 9.334-53 in Add. VI.

Lord Mayor and ladies and the rest, be patient.
The state hath sent, and I must needs be gone.
Lead on there.—What seek’st thou, fellow?

PLAYER
of
WIT Your lordship sent us eight angels by your man, and I have lost one here amongst the rushes.

MORE Eight angels? Who delivered it? I sent them ten.

SERVINGMAN I, my lord, delivered it. Anon they shall have two more.

PLAYER of WIT That’s more than we heard before, my lord.

MORE Am I a man of equity

Equally to divide true right his own,
And shall I have deceivers in my house?
Go pull the coat over the varlet’s ears.
There are too many such.
Give them their due. Lead on away.

B2. First Version of 17.106-127 (Stay... states) in the Original Text.

Come, let’s to the block.

HANGMAN My lord, I pray ye put off your doublet.

MORE No, my good friend, I have a great cold already, and I would be loath to take more. Point me meet the block, for I was ne’er here before.

HANGMAN

To the east side, my lord.

MORE Then to the east.

We go to sigh; that o’er, to sleep in rest.
No eye salute my trunk with a sad tear.
Our birth to heaven should be thus: void of fear. Exit

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

BY SHAKESPEARE, ADAPTED BY THOMAS MIDDLETON

Measure for Measure
, first printed in the 1623 Folio, was performed at court on 26 December 1604. Plague had caused London’s theatres to be closed from May 1603 to April 1604; the play was probably written and first acted during this period. Dislocations and other features of the text as printed suggest that it may have undergone adaptation after Shakespeare’s death. Someone—perhaps Thomas Middleton, to judge by the style—seems to have supplied a new, seedy opening to Act I, Scene 2; and an adapter seems also to have altered 3.1. 517-4.1.63 by transposing the Duke’s two soliloquies, by introducing a stanza from a popular song, and supplying dialogue to follow it, and by adding other short passages. We print the text in what we believe to be its adapted form; a conjectured reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original version of the adapted sections is given in the Additional Passages.

The story of a woman who, in seeking to save the life of a male relative, arouses the lust of a man in authority was an ancient one that reached literary form in the mid sixteenth century. Shakespeare may have known the prose version in Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi’s
Gli Ecatommiti
(1565, translated into French in 1583) and the same author’s play
Epitia
(1573, published in 1583), but his main source was George Whetstone’s unsuccessful, unperformed two-part tragicomedy
Promos and Cassandra,
published in 1578.

Shakespeare’s title comes from St Matthew’s account of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again’. The title is not expressive of the play’s morality, but it alerts the spectator to Shakespeare’s exploration of moral issues. His heroine, Isabella, is not merely, as in Whetstone, a virtuous young maiden: she is about to enter a nunnery. Her brother, Claudio, has not, as in Whetstone, been accused (however unjustly) of rape: his union with the girl (Juliet) he has made pregnant has been ratified by a betrothal ceremony, and lacks only the church’s formal blessing. So Angelo, deputizing for the absent Duke of Vienna, seems peculiarly harsh in attempting to enforce the city’s laws against fornication by insisting on Claudio’s execution; and Angelo’s hypocrisy in demanding Isabella’s chastity in return for her brother’s life seems correspondingly greater. By adding the character of Mariana, to whom Angelo himself had once been betrothed, and by employing the traditional motif of the ‘bed-trick’, by which Mariana substitutes for Isabella in Angelo’s bed, Shakespeare permits Isabella both to retain her virtue and to forgive Angelo without marrying him.

Although
Measure for Measure,
like
The Merchant of Venice
, is much concerned with justice and mercy, its more explicit concern with sex and death along with the intense emotional reality, at least in the earlier part of the play, of its portrayal of Angelo, Isabella, and Claudio, creates a deeper seriousness of tone which takes it out of the world of romantic comedy into that of tragicomedy or, as the twentieth-century label has it, ‘problem play’. Its low-life characters inhabit a diseased world of brothels and prisons, but there is a life-enhancing quality in their frank acknowledgement of sexuality; and the Duke’s manipulation of events casts a tinge of romance over the play’s later scenes.

Measure for Measure’s
subtle and passionate exploration of issues of sexual morality, of the uses and abuses of power, gave it a special appeal in the later part of the twentieth century. Each of the ‘good’ characters fails in some respect; none of the ‘bad’ ones lacks some redeeming quality; all are, in the last analysis, ‘desperately mortal’ (4.2.148).

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Vincentio, the DUKE of Vienna
ANGELO, appointed his deputy
ESCALUS, an old lord, appointed Angelo’s secondary

CLAUDIO, a young gentleman
JULIET, betrothed to Claudio
ISABELLA, Claudio’s sister, novice to a sisterhood of nuns

LUCIO, ‘a fantastic’
Two other such GENTLEMEN
FROTH, a foolish gentleman
MISTRESS OVERDONE, a bawd
POMPEY, her clownish servant
A PROVOST
ELBOW, a simple constable
A JUSTICE
ABHORSON, an executioner
BARNARDINE, a dissolute condemned prisoner
MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo
A BOY, attendant on Mariana
FRIAR PETER
FRANCESCA, a nun
VARRIUS, a lord, friend to the Duke
Lords, officers, citizens, servants

Measure for Measure

1.1
Enter the Duke, Escalus, and other lords
DUKE Escalus.

ESCALUS My lord.

DUKE

Of government the properties to unfold
Would seem in me t’affect speech and discourse,
Since I am put to know that your own science
Exceeds in that the lists of all advice
My strength can give you. Then no more remains
But this: to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,
And let them work. The nature of our people,
Our city’s institutions and the terms
For common justice, you’re as pregnant in
As art and practice hath enriched any
That we remember.

He gives Escalus papers

There is our commission,

From which we would not have you warp.
(To a lord)
Call hither,
I say bid come before us, Angelo.
Exit lord
(
To Escalus
) What figure of us think you he will
bear?—
For you must know we have with special soul
Elected him our absence to supply,
Lent him our terror, dressed him with our love,
And given his deputation all the organs
Of our own power. What think you of it?

ESCALUS

If any in Vienna be of worth
To undergo such ample grace and honour,
It is Lord Angelo.

Enter Angelo

DUKE

Look where he comes.

ANGELO

Always obedient to your grace’s will,
I come to know your pleasure.

DUKE

Angelo,

There is a kind of character in thy life
That to th‘observer doth thy history
Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues; nor nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use. But 1 do bend my speech
To one that can my part in him advertise.
Hold therefore, Angelo.
In our remove be thou at full ourself.
Mortality and mercy in Vienna
Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,
Though first in question, is thy secondary.
Take thy commission.

ANGELO

Now good my lord,

Let there be some more test made of my metal
Before so noble and so great a figure
Be stamped upon it.

DUKE No more evasion.

We have with leavened and prepared choice
Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.

⌈
Angelo takes his commission
⌉

Our haste from hence is of so quick condition
That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestioned
Matters of needful value. We shall write to you
As time and our concernings shall importune,
How it goes with us; and do look to know
What doth befall you here. So fare you well.
To th’ hopeful execution do I leave you
Of your commissions.

ANGELO

Yet give leave, my lord,

That we may bring you something on the way.

DUKE My haste may not admit it;

Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do
With any scruple. Your scope is as mine own,
So to enforce or qualify the laws
As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand.
I’ll privily away. I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and
aves
vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

ANGELO

The heavens give safety to your purposes!

ESCALUS

Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!

DUKE I thank you. Fare you well.

Exit

ESCALUS

I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave
To have free speech with you; and it concerns me
To look into the bottom of my place.
A power I have, but of what strength and nature
I am not yet instructed.

ANGELO

’Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,
And we may soon our satisfaction have
Touching that point.

ESCALUS

I’ll wait upon your honour.

Exeunt

1.2
Enter Lucio, and two other Gentlemen

LUCIO If the Duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then, all the dukes fall upon the King.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!

SECOND GENTLEMAN Amen.

LUCIO Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table.

SECOND GENTLEMAN ‘Thou shalt not steal’?

LUCIO Ay, that he razed.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Why, ’twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all that in the thanksgiving before meat do relish the petition well that prays for peace. 16

SECOND GENTLEMAN I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO I believe thee, for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

SECOND GENTLEMAN No? A dozen times at least. 20

FIRST GENTLEMAN What, in metre?

LUCIO In any proportion, or in any language.

FIRST GENTLEMAN I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO Ay, why not? Grace is grace despite of all controversy; as for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain despite of all grace.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.

LUCIO I grant—as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list.

FIRST GENTLEMAN And thou the velvet. Thou art good velvet, thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee. I had as lief be a list of an English kersey as be piled as thou art pilled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now?

LUCIO I think thou dost, and indeed with most painful feeling of thy speech. I will out of thine own confession learn to begin thy health, but whilst I live forget to drink after thee.

FIRST GENTLEMAN I think I have done myself wrong, have I not? 40

SECOND GENTLEMAN Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free.