The Textual Presence of Staging and Acting in Measure for Measure

Abstract

M EASURE FOR MEASURE begins with a false departure which enables the protagonist to occupy at will the center of the stage. Nothing whatever comes from outside Vienna, and Duke Vincentio actually has to direct and perform his return to a position and place he has never left. The initial displacement1 sets in motion all subsequent development. From a metadramatic standpoint, Angelo functions as an understudy for the Duke who casts himself in the part of a friar. But Vincentio's deputy in no way enjoys the usual powers of a ruler, though not necessarily because his director has imposed limitations on him or delegated only the authority to punish sexual transgression. Actually, the only professional criminal mentioned in the play, the notorious pirate Ragozine, dies of a fever without making an appearance. It would seem that Angelo himself has reduced the scope of his office to a single executive capacity. Moreover, the Duke has chosen his replacement with the stated expectation that he would reactivate a law fallen into disuse and would play a part far different from his own-indeed, a part that Angelo has never stopped playing: that of a doctrinal rigorist, a role quite unacceptable to a humanist who happens to excel at playing God, both Christian and ex machina. Critics from John A. Heraud back in 1865 to Louise Schleiner as recently as March 1982 have wondered at the biblical intertextuality of the comedy.2 Measure for Measure, which starts with the parable of the talents, ends with that of the wise virgins. Many competent and even inspired scholars, including G. Wilson Knight, have ably assessed the Duke's degree of holiness or perversity throughout the play.3 I do not intend to question or justify the Duke's or anybody else's motives and morality, but merely to discuss their theatricality even to the neglect of the undeniable profundity of this problematic masterpiece. In any event, Vincentio entrusts Angelo with the leading role, but without bothering to supply a text. Thus the deputy has full license to write his own script whose unfolding the Duke will observe, so to speak, from a hidden loge. Luckily, the Duke has not delegated his powers to a truly creative