Remember now my brother

[sovay]

What I did until then, apparently, was construct a post.

Browsing through back archives of Yuletide last night, I found it striking that what fandom there is for Measure for Measure seems to center around Angelo/Isabella, when the pairing that most interests me is the canonical one, Angelo and Mariana. In this I freely admit to being influenced by a production I saw at the Publick Theatre in high school, which played Angelo's prudery and stiff-backed repression as straight as his sudden and bewildering attraction to Isabella, so that when he came out with the famous proposition ("He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love"), he seemed to have shocked himself as much as Isabella or the audience—and then, half as if he had now forfeited any idea of himself as a moral being, half as if he were just free-falling without his unimpeachable cage of rules to hold him in place, kept on making the situation worse until brought up short against a stronger force, which in most productions I imagine is Isabella or the returning Duke of Vienna, but here was Mariana. He held himself together through the exposure of his crimes, his public disgrace, his shotgun marriage and even his sentence of death, but he collapsed on the steps with his head in his hands, utterly undone, when the woman he'd abandoned five years ago and fucked unknowingly "Tuesday night last in's garden-house" began to plead for his life. She wants him still, faithless and fucked-up as he is. She wanted him enough to take Isabella's place at the assignation, to have him even in another woman's skin. (I was left by this production with the sense that the bed trick was not all Duke Vincentio's invention. I have no idea how they worked that with the text. But even if the Duke does propose the substitution and Mariana only agrees, that is still a fascinating statement about her desire: a husband afterward is not guaranteed.) And not the fact of his sins, but the possibility of being forgiven them, is what he cannot get his head around. He knows about lust, not love. He would never have granted himself so much clemency.

So I am curious about what happens afterward between them; and I am curious about what happens between Act IV, Scenes 1 and 4, because of course all the sex is offstage in Shakespeare, but something as complicated as the bed trick feels like incredibly important sex. What is Angelo like, falling away from his self-conception as the ice-cold deputy, the model of marble rectitude? What does he expect from a self-sacrificing novice nun with a mind as precise and abstract as his own? Is Mariana playing his fantasy? Is she safe as herself, knowing she won't be recognized? (What do they do, though, that he doesn't even have cause to wonder? Maybe he does, and dismisses the thought. All cats are grey in the dark. Maybe his higher brain functions just short out.) Is it, after all, what he wanted? The set-up is Shakespeare; there are so many different ways it could be played. I wonder if anyone's tried, in performance.

I appear to be talking myself into writing Shakespeare slash, and I am not nearly feverish enough for that. No Highway in the Sky (1951) was quite good. I may try to post about it. I may also go to bed.

Comments

[teenybuffalo.livejournal.com]

I can see I'm going to have to read this play. I've come this far in life without reading a lot of Shakespeare obscuries, and currently that feels like a mistake.

[sovay]

I've come this far in life without reading a lot of Shakespeare obscuries, and currently that feels like a mistake.

Measure for Measure is rather like a five-act elaboration of "Anathea," with bonus string-pulling Drosselmeyer figure. It is supposedly set in Vienna. Everyone is named things like Angelo, Claudio, Isabella, Vincentio. (There is one character named Lodowick and he's an alias.) It is rightly identified as a problem play; its resolution is very strange and can be spun all sorts of ways by directors with a variety of interpretations. I seem to be fond of it.

[naomichana.livejournal.com]

I've always been puzzled about how the ubiquitous literary bedtrick was intended to work - a practical difficulty acknowledged by the midrashic tradition which has Rachel hiding under Jacob's bed to supply the voice while Leah supplies the body. (And Rachel and Leah are at least sisters - I've seen three productions of Measure for Measure, and none of them had cast similarly-shaped women playing Isabella and Mariana.) Wendy Doniger has an entire book on bedtricks, the most convincing of which are the ones requiring divine or at least demonic powers of shapeshifting.

For Measure for Measure, though, I want the sequel that explains what's going on with Isabella and the Duke. If she is meant to approve of his proposal, why does she remain silent? If she is meant to be appalled at his proposal, why does the play end there? Does anyone in Shakespearean Vienna know how to get married without the threat of coercive judicial action? (And is that why they seem to be so fond of disguises?)

[sovay]

I've always been puzzled about how the ubiquitous literary bedtrick was intended to work - a practical difficulty acknowledged by the midrashic tradition which has Rachel hiding under Jacob's bed to supply the voice while Leah supplies the body.

That is definitely less stupid than most versions . . .

Wendy Doniger has an entire book on bedtricks, the most convincing of which are the ones requiring divine or at least demonic powers of shapeshifting.

Yeah. I believe Zeus standing in for Amphitryon. It's no go the conception of Arthur unless Ygraine's in on it.

For Measure for Measure, though, I want the sequel that explains what's going on with Isabella and the Duke.

It's conceivable someone's written one. There's all this professionally published Hamlet fic.

Does anyone in Shakespearean Vienna know how to get married without the threat of coercive judicial action?

That is a totally reasonable question!

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

In most tellings, Merlin cast a shapeshifting spell on Uther so that he looked like Gorlois (this is also the version shown in Excalibur). However, I prefer to think that Ygraine was a willing participant -- otherwise she's reduced to a passive vessel, like most of the women in such epics.

[sovay]

In most tellings, Merlin cast a shapeshifting spell on Uther so that he looked like Gorlois (this is also the version shown in Excalibur).

I grew up on Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave. I—like you—prefer her knowing and wanting.

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

I read the Stewart cycle, as well as Zimmer Bradley's Avalon one. Ygraine is portrayed as an active participant in both. Bradley's take was both more problematic and more original. Stewart wrote well, but through the eyes of a fairly conventional Merlin.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Me too, re: The Crystal Cave.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Maybe his higher brain functions just short out.

This is the only way I have ever been able to believe in any bed-trick not involving magic.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And not the fact of his sins, but the possibility of being forgiven them, is what he cannot get his head around. He knows about lust, not love. He would never have granted himself so much clemency.

Interesting. It's very painful, realizing the world is more generous than you yourself are. Reminds me of Cash on Demand.

[sovay]

It's very painful, realizing the world is more generous than you yourself are. Reminds me of Cash on Demand.

I do not know if it's the standard interpretation of Angelo, but it's the one that's stuck with me.