Northrup Frye on Measure for Measure

I recently read Frye's take on Measure for Measure. Figure it might add to someone's understanding of this awesome play:

Frye on Measure for Measure:

-story used in play has many variants, but the kernel of it is a situation in which a women comes to a judge to plead for the life of a man close to her (husband or brother), who has been condemned to death.
judge tells her that he’ll spare the man’s life at the price of her sexual surrender to him
In some versions she agrees and the judge double crosses her, having the man executed anyway. She then appeals to a higher power who (in stories where it is the husband) orders the judge to marry her and then has him executed.
Play called Promos and Cassandra by George Whetstone (1578) is closest to Measure for Measure.
A story in a collection by an Italian writer named Cinthio, that also contains basis for Othello. ---> Shakespeare used these collections often as they were the formed on basis of folktales.
Three very common aspects of folktales: 1) The disguised ruler
2) The corrupt judge
3) The bed trick

Look in detail at these three:

Disguised Ruler:
Duke of Vienna is coward to enforce his own laws against adultery in his town, worried it will affect his nice guy image.
Places inept Angelo is charge, despite having complete very competitent (conscientious and humane) underling in Escalus.
Duke also appears as sneaky and underhanded by returning in disguise.
What we think of him is irrelevant.
What happens as a result of the Duke’s leaving the scene is that we’re plunged into a lower level of law and social organization.
Angelo is simply out to administer the law (or a law against fornication) according to legalistic rules
Idea of “transcendental” authority depends on the ruler’s understanding of equity.
If a ruler hasn’t enough of such understanding, authority becomes a repressive legalism.
Legalism of this sort descends from what in the bible is called the knowledge of
good and evil
this was forbidden knowledge because it is not genuine knowledge at all: it really
can’t tell us about good and evil
this kind of knowledge came into the world along with the discovery of self-
conscious sex.
The thing that repressive legalism has been obsessed with ever since is the sexual
Impulse. ---> this why the it is the only law of interest to the abdicating Duke
Shakespeare time assumption was the law given in Old Testament was primarily a symbol of the spiritual life.
The law itself can’t make people virtuous or even better: it can only define the lawbreaker
By internalizing that law as part of nature rather than a set of objective rules to be obeyed, one is free what Paul called “the bondage of law”
Under the “law” man is already a criminal, condemned by his disobedience to God.
If God weren’t inclined to mercy, charity, and equity than no one gets to heaven
Angelo’s breakdown illustrates the fact that no one can observe the law perfectly
Isabella mirrors Portia in MOV when she says to Angelo: “Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once” (Act II. ii. 73)
No culture is made up from an ideology: “I think people first of all make up all the stories, and then extract ideas and assumptions from them.” (pg.143)
Christian ideology was a derivation from Christian mythology
Our word myth comes Greek word mythos meaning plot, story, narrative.
The Christian myth is structurally closet to comedy
Rather than a play attempting to discuss prostitution and political theory, the Bard reflects this priority of mythology to ideology.
Because of this his plays become more primitive as the begin to reflect more and more the
Underlying mythologies.
They don’t depend on logic, they don’t explain things and don’t give you room to react
You have to listen or read through to the end.


Crooked Judge:
Often comedy begins with a irrational law - irrational in the sense that it blocks up the main thrust of the story, which somehow manages to evade or ignore it.
Usually such law is set up to block the sexual desires of the hero and heroine, and often it
Is simply the will of the parent
Sometimes it also appears in the form of deep gloom or melancholy (twelfth night for
example: Duke and Olivia)
These are elements associated with the corrupt judge aspect.
Angelo does express strong doubts about his fitness for the post
Lucio is horrified by the enforcement of the law on Claudio and Julietta because he sees that the enforcement could interfere with his own sex life (spends free time in brothels)
The scene with Elbow bringing Pompey to the magistrates court establishes three points:
1)Angelo leaving the court and placing Escalus in charge pointing towards the following
idea: “If you despise other people for their moral inferiority to yourself, your own superiority
won’t last long”
2)Escalus can hardly figure out who did what to whom. Calls into question the ability of the
law ever to get hold of the right people, or understand what is really going on about
anything
3)Claudio who is a decent man, is about to be beheaded while Pompey, a pimp, is let off
with a warning.
No real mention of syphilis that is emerging at time of play: Would play too much rational behind the law ---> “He’s no more out to justify the law than to attack it; he merely presents the king of hold that such a law has on society, in all its fumbling uncertainty and lack of direction.” (pg.145)
Frye points out the humor of the scene between Isabella and Angelo (both very ridiculous characters to be having this conversation) ---> They are very tightly placed within their characters
The humors in this case are two forms of predictable virtue, in people paralyzed by moral
rigidity.
Isabella gets increasingly interested in her role, another meeting without Lucio is arranged,
And the serpent of Eden thrusts itself up between Justice in his black robes and purity in
Her white robes, and tells them both that they’re naked.
Isabella tells her brother that now he must die not because of the law, but defend her honor
Claudio is very unwilling to die, and this demoralizes Isabella very much so
This awakens her from her dreamlike state, and she sees a prison: “A real prison,
Not the dream prison she’d like her convent to be.” (pg.147)
Duke appears as a friar who is most likely the prison chaplain. ---> tells Claudio he should welcome death because if he lives he will likely get a lot of uncomfortable diseases.
Duke/friar remains untouched despite Angelo has betrayed his trust, Claudio is about to die, and Isabella’s dreams of a contemplative spiritual life, free from the corruptions of the world, are shattered.
As we go on we feel less and less like condemning people because of the “steady increase of a sense of irony.”
This sense of a dramatic irony replaces the impulse to make moral judgments again points to limitations of this kind of law.
Angelo is certainly not more likeable as a hypocritical fraud than he was is his days of incorruptibility, but he seems somehow more accessible, even more understandable.
When the Duke finally steps forward the rhythm abruptly switches from blank verse to prose (III i 150) ---> this is break point in the play, when it goes from dismal ironic tragedy to a different kind of play
“The Duke in disguise is producing and directing it, working out the plot, casting the characters, and arranging even such details as positioning and lighting.” (pg.148-149)
This is play within a play, a half play that swallows and digests the other half.
Second half of play begins with tale of Marianna, providing a close parallel to the Claudio position.
This leads to the implementation of the bed trick

The Bed Trick
“It sounds like a very dubious scheme for a pious friar to talk a pious novice into, but something in Isabella seems to have accepted the fact that she’s in a new ball game, and that the convent has vanished from her horizon.” (pg.149)
This can be seen in bible with Jacob and Leah (he expected Rachel) --->Polygamous society he got both anyhow
Shakespeare’s bed trick is used to hook a man to woman he ought to be married to anyhow
Its a device for the middle part of a comedy (a period of confused identity where characters run around in the dark)
It represents the illusory nature of lust, in contrast to genuine love.
For Angelo the bed trick is agent both of redemption and condemnation
Marianna is the final spark plug of the play ---> without her there is no redemption for Angelo
Nearly always in Shakespeare’s comedies one of the women is responsible for the final resolution.
Isabella’s speech corresponds dramatically to Portia’s speech on mercy in MOV
Her speech is short, thoughtful, painfully improvised, and full of obvious fallacies as a legal
argument
Important fact here is that she is now pleading for the life of the man who she believes has
killed her brother.
Lucio is sparkplug of first half of play ---> without his intervention there would have been no Isabella in the play (Claudio would have died)
Only one Duke’s characters that his benevolent trickery has had no effect upon
Because of this the Duke passes a strong initial sentence upon
Lucio actually utters the phrase: “the old fantastical Duke of dark corners.” (IV iii 156)



Duke as Trickster
The trickster may be simply mischievous or malicious, and may be associated with certain tricky animals.
In some religions the trickster figure is sublimated into a hidden force for good whose workings are mysterious but eventually reveal a deep benevolence.
There are traces of this conception in Christianity, where a “providence” is spoken of that
Brings events about in unlikely and unexpected ways.
Duke in this play is a trickster figure who is trying to turn a tragic situation into a comedic one.
This operation requires the regenerating of his society (and hence, his characters)
He opens up, by leaving his place in society, a train of events headed for the bleakest tragedy
By his actions in disguise he brings the main characters together in a new kind of social order, based on trust instead of threats.
Trickster elements come out in fact that his schemes involve a quite bewildering amount of lying.
Tells Isabella that there’s no real deception in what he does
Tells Claudio in prison that Angelo is only making trial of Isabella’s virtue.
Isabella is told lie that Claudio has been executed after all
Gives contradictory orders to Angelo and Escalus
When he “remembers” to talk like a friar he sounds sanctimonious rather than saintly
In this play most of the major male characters are threatened with death, the two young women are threatened with the death of others. ----> Yet, no one dies. (Even Barnardine is freed)
Ancient doctrine in comedic theory is that one of the standard features of comedy is the Greek term basanos: both ordeal and touchstone; the unpleasant experience that’s a test of character.
This what the Duke illustrates in his conversation with Claudio in prison
“Forgiveness and reconciliation come at the end of a comedy because they belong at the end of a comedy, not because Shakespeare “believed” in them.” (pg. 153)