2016
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06vrfys/prim
e-ministers-questions-06012016
 11.42-13.18
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/using/pract
ical-information/eaccess/passwords
Denmark, Illyria, Troy, Vienna,
Venice / Cyprus
 1600-1
Hamlet
 1601
Twelfth Night
 1602
Troilus and Cressida
 1603-4
Measure for Measure
 1603-4
Othello
 (based on Oxford Shakespeare chronology)
Genre
Bending
Richard Westall,
‘William
Shakespeare
between Tragedy
and Comedy’,
1835
 The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,
historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragicalcomical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or
poem unlimited… (Polonius in Hamlet 2.2)
 1600-1
Hamlet
 1601
Twelfth Night
 1602
Troilus and Cressida
 1603-4
Measure for Measure
 1603-4
Othello
 Satirico-tragi-comical… Monstruous hybrids
Politics:
Measure for Measure
Form: Verse/prose proportions
 King John, Richard II, Henry VI, 1 and 3 = 100% verse (Richard
III 98%); Shrew and Dream = 80%
 (But Nb: Henry IV, 1 (55/45) and 2 (50/50); Falstaff)
 Hamlet 75/25
 Twelfth Night 40/60
 Troilus 70/30
 Measure 65/35
 Othello 80/20
Form: Loosening the line

O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times:
So many hours must I tend my flock;
So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean:
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass'd over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. (3 Henry VI, 2.5. c.1591)
Middle to Late Style
 A series of feminine endings makes blank verse seem more
speechlike, less patterned, exactly because, as in phrases of
ordinary speech, rhyme is absent and the final unstressed
syllables fail to match […] Shakespeare’s late plays, in fact,
show four related style changes: feminine endings appear
much more frequently; the verse in which they appear is
usually blank; the phrasing breaks more often after the sixth
syllable (or later) rather than the fourth or fifth; and most of
the lines are enjambed.
 Shakespeare’s Metrical Art, George T Wright (Berkeley, 1988)
pp.162-3
ANGELO: What's this? what's this? is this her fault or mine?
The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!
Not she, nor doth she tempt; / but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season ./ Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? / O fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou? or what are thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live:
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? what is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook: / most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet
With all her double vigor, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. / Ever till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.
The Bed – Hamlet:
Let not the royal bed of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest.
The Bed – Twelfth Night
 Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet
gown; having come from a day-bed, where I have left
Olivia sleeping,—

 Wilt thou go to bed, Malvolio?
 To bed? Aye, sweetheart, and I’ll come to thee.
The Bed – Measure for Measure
 Claudio: upon a true contract
I got possession of Julietta's bed (1.2)
 Isabella: 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
That longing have been sick for, ere I'd yield
My body up to shame. (2.4)
 Duke to Isabella: Haste you speedily
to Angelo: if for this night he entreat you to his
bed, give him promise of satisfaction. (3.1)
 ‘Bed-trick’ (see also All’s Well that Ends Well)
The Bed – Troilus and Cressida
 Achilles and Patroclus:
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day
Breaks scurril jests; (1.3)
 Whereupon I will show you a chamber with a
bed; which bed, because it shall not speak of your
pretty encounters, press it to death: away!
And Cupid grant all tongue-tied maidens here
Bed, chamber, Pandar to provide this gear!
1. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN SOURCE TEXTS
AND PLAY TEXT,
EXPECTATION AND EXECUTION
 Main sources:
 The corrupt governor / indecent proposal story as
exemplum / folktale
 Cinthio Hecatommithi (1565): Decade 8, Novella 5
(another novella will form primary source for Othello)
 George Whetstone’s 2-part play Promos and Cassandra
(1578) – Promos and Cassandra = Angelo and Isabella
 In all sources:




Isabella equivalent is not a nun
Isabella equivalent sleeps with Angelo equivalent
‘Isabella’ marries ‘Angelo’
In some sources: Angelo is then executed; in other
sources, Angelo is reprieved and he and Isabella live
happily ever after.

UNIQUE TO SHAKESPEARE:
 CENTRALITY OF DUKE: DUKE IN DISGUISE (DISGUISED
RULER VOGUE)
 ISABELLA’S VOCATION
 USE OF THE BED-TRICK (see above)
2. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN
THEORY AND PRACTICE;
MIND AND BODY
 No, Holy Father, throw away that thought;
 Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
 Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee
 To give me secret harbour hath a purpose
 More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
 Of burning youth.
(1.3.1-6)
3. MIND THE
LINGUISTIC GAP

MO REASONS FOR THIS ACTION
 AT OUR MORE LEISURE SHALL I RENDER YOU;
 ONLY THIS ONE: LORD ANGELO IS
PRECISE,
 STANDS AT A GUARD WITH ENVY, SCARCE CONFESSES
 THAT HIS BLOOD FLOWS, OR THAT HIS APPETITE
 IS MORE TO BREAD THAN STONE. HENCE SHALL WE SEE
 IF POWER CHANGE PURPOSE, WHAT OUR SEEMERS BE.
• (1.3.48-54)
3. Mind the Linguistic Gap
http://www.oed.com/
Lord Angelo is precise…
http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/index.cfm
http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/
EEBO:
http://eebo.chadwyck.com/sea
rch
Diseases of the Soul: A Discourse Divine,
Moral and Physicall (1613) Thomas Adams

Disease no. 12: The Rotten Fever of Hypocrisy … which is nothing els, but vice in Vertues
apparell… He
lookes squintey'd, ayming at two things at once, the
satisfying his owne lusts, and that the world may not be aware of
it.

hauing much angell without, more diuel within

a painted sepulcher, that conceales much rottennesse: a crude Gloe-worme shining in the darke:
a stinking dunghill couer'd ouer with snow:

His words are precise, his deeds concise; Hee forceth formall precisenesse, like a Porter to hold
the dore, whiles diuels dance within. He giues God nothing but shew, as if he would pay him
his reckoning with chalke; which encreaseth the debt […] Hee
is false in his
friendship, hartlesse in his zeale, proud in his humilitie. He
railes against enterludes, yet is himselfe neuer off the stage,
and condemnes a maske, when his whole life is nothing els.
4. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN TEXT AND
PERFORMANCE
Text image on left
Performance on right
Trevor Nunn (RSC, 1991): Freud’s Vienna
Simon McBurney (National 2006): the war on (t)error…
Lucio. Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate,
that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but
scraped one out of the table.
Second Gent. ‘Thou shalt not steal?’
Lucio. Ay, that he razed.
(1.2)
I do hope the Reverend Tony Blair doesn't go to see this
production. It might give him ideas, and he has had more
than enough of those already. Just imagine if he decided to
crack down on sex, as he has already cracked down on
such pursuits as smoking and fox hunting […] Angelo is a
fervent neo-con…
Charles Spencer, Telegraph 17 Feb 2006
ISABEL’S SILENCE AND KEMBLE’S ENDING (1794 – )
DUKE: FOR THEE, SWEET SAINT, - IF, FOR A BROTHER SAVED

FROM THAT MOST HOLY SHRINE THOU WERT DEVOTE TO

THOU DEIGN TO SPARE SOME PORTION OF THY LOVE,

THY DUKE, THY FRIAR, TEMPTS THEE FROM THY VOW

[ISABEL IS FALLING TO HER KNEES, THE DUKE PREVENTS HER
KISSES HER HAND, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS SPEECH]

IN ITS RIGHT ORB LET THY TRUE SPIRIT SHINE

BLESSING BOTH PRINCE AND PEOPLE – THUS WE’LL REIGN

RICH IN POSSESSION OF THEIR HEARTS, AND WARNED

BY THE ABUSE OF DELEGATED TRUST

ENGRAVE THIS ROYAL MAXIM ON THE MIND

TO RULE OURSELVES BEFORE WE RULE MANKIND.
•
(FLOURISH OF DRUMS AND
TRUMPETS)
ISABELLA’S SILENCE AND PETER BROOK’S
ACT V (1950)
MARIANA: O ISABEL, WILL YOU NOT LEND A KNEE?
DUKE: HE DIES FOR CLAUDIO’S DEATH.
ISABELLA (kneeling)
MOST BOUNTEOUS SIR,
LOOK, IF IT PLEASE YOU, ON THIS MAN CONDEMNED
IF MY BROTHER LIVED.
PETER BROOK: ‘THIS
WAS A SILENCE IN WHICH ALL THE INVISIBLE
ELEMENTS OF THE EVENING CAME TOGETHER, A SILENCE IN
WHICH THE ABSTRACT NOTION OF MERCY BECAME CONCRETE
FOR THAT MOMENT TO THOSE PRESENT.’
 The gap of Isabella’s silence to the Duke’s proposal
4 MEMOS
MIND THE GAP between:
 1) source texts and play texts
 2) theory and practice
 3) what words might have signified then and what they
mean now
 4) text and performance (then and now)
 Offcuts
4. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN
EACH HALF OF THE PLAY
‘In IV.1 we are transported to the
world of romance itself – to the
moated grange, to Mariana and her
music, to the lyrical description of
Angelo’s garden, and to kindly
intrigue – in short, to a world as far
removed from the corrupt
atmosphere of Vienna as Portia’s
enchanted Belmont is from the
commercial turmoil of Venice.’
(J.M. Nosworthy, intro to Arden
edition 1969)
‘The most famous work of art
inspired by Middleton is
undoubtedly Dante Gabriel
Rossetti’s ‘Mariana’ (1870),
based on a Middleton passage
in Measure for Measure.’
(Gary Taylor, intro to Complete
Thomas Middleton)
4. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN THE FIRST
PERFORMANCES OF THE PLAY AND ITS FIRST
APPEARANCE IN PRINT
 Measure written in 1603/4
 First recorded performance was in front of King James
in the banqueting hall at Whitehall on Boxing Day,
1604
 But does not come into print until its publication in
1623 in the First Folio.
 What happens to text/s between 1603/4 and 1623?
Middleton and Measure
 The Oxford Middleton publishes a ‘GENETIC TEXT’ – which aims
to show the play’s development from one state to another.

First 79 lines of 1.2: Middleton’s stylistic fingerprint is all over this
passage.
 Topical references place the additions around 1621. Poverty, pirates
 Lucio’s presence is in 2.2 is wholly or mostly attributed to Middleton.

Bawd played by boy actor becomes ‘Mistress Overdone’ – her first
appearance in 1.2, like Lucio’s, is in part of play Middleton is thought
to have added.
 Pompey’s speech in 4.3 cataloguing the inhabitants of the crowded
prison also suspected addition.
Middleton and Measure
 Why Vienna? ‘There are reasons to suppose that Shakespeare set the play
in Italian Ferrara, and that Middleton altered the setting specifically in
order to establish the Thirty Years’ War as a backdrop.’ Vienna as seat of
Catholic emperor Ferdinand II and as a city at war.

Partly explains the Italian names of the original.

‘Even before adaptation, Measure would have been amongst the most
Middletonian of Shakespeare’s plays.’ With the exception of The Comedy
of Errors, Measure is Shakespeare’s only strictly urban comedy.

Middleton is the only person known to have adapted a Shakespeare play
for the professional theatre before the Restoration; he was entrusted to do
so by Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men.

Puritan and anti-theatricalist writer Philip Stubbes on the garden-alleys
and their pleasure houses:

‘Some of these places are little better than the stews and brothel houses
were in times past […] In the fields and suburbs of the cities they have
gardens, either paled or walled around very high, with their arbours and
bowers fit for the purpose […] And for that their gardens are locked, some
of them have three or four keys apiece, whereof one they keep for
themselves, the other their paramours have to go in before them.’

‘These resorts of pleasure were used by the light-heeled or bored citizen’s
wife as well as by the superior type of courtesan’ (Salgadi, The Elizabethan
Underworld, p.59)