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Measure for Measure and Christian Doctrine of the Atonement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
A recent editor of Shakespeare describes Measure for Measure as “strange and puzzling,” “the despair of commentators.” No play, it would seem, has met with estimates more conflicting. Even common sense (in the person of Samuel Johnson) has voiced disapproval; and the insight of Coleridge, which so often probes deeper, has registered here a pained dislike. Complaints against either the play's subject, its plot, its hero, or its heroine have been heard from critics as eminent as Hazlitt, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and Sir Edmund Chambers. In opposition to the disparagers, however, there has appeared within the last century a strain of favorable criticism, lately almost enthusiastic. The rehabilitation may be said to have begun when certain Victorian commentators proclaimed Isabella a sweetly noble heroine, defying Mrs. Lennox's judgment of her as a “mere Vixen.” Yet these same Victorians disapproved the Duke; so that the recent and brilliant apology for the Duke by G. Wilson Knight, comparing the Duke's words and deeds with those of Jesus Christ, has come as a remarkable advance in the reappreciation of the play. At the same time W. W. Lawrence, by his study of medieval custom and analogue, has helped recommend the play's action and enhance its theatrical plausibility. Despite these defenses there are critics who continue to read Measure for Measure as a portrait of disillusionment,‘ negation, and the playwright's supposed cynicism. But two recent Annual Lectures before the British Academy take up boldly the opposite view. C. J. Sisson declares that “Far from being rotten, the play is sound to the core, and profoundly Christian in spirit”; and the late R. W. Chambers acclaims it as embodying a philosophy “more definitely Christian than that of The Tempest.” Appearing the same year as Professor Chambers’ spirited essay is C. J. Reimer's Marburg dissertation, in which we find repeated with emphasis Louis Albrecht's earlier high estimate of the play: it reveals, say these German scholars, the “Hauptzüge der Shakespeareschen Weltanschauung”—namely, a Christian faith not dogmatic or ecclesiastical but Biblical and evangelical. Finally, there has been in recent months a flurry of essays exploring the play's ethical nature. D. A. Traversi calls Measure for Measure “uncompromisingly moral”; F. R. Leavis finds in it a “fineness of ethical and poetic sensibility” which makes it “one of the very greatest of the plays”; and Miss M. C. Bradbrook offers the suggestion to regard it as “something resembling the medieval Morality.” Out of this welter of criticism one truth clearly emerges: that in this instance Shakespeare's work has abundantly justified its teasing title by becoming a “measure” for critics.
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References
1 T. M. Parrott, Shakespeare (New York, 1938), p. 589.
2 Charlotte Lennox, Shakespear Illustrated (1753), i, 32. The Victorian attitude is best illustrated in Mrs. Anna Jameson's Shakespeare's Female Characters and the Rev. H. N. Hudson's Shakespeare: His Life, Art, and Characters.
3 The Wheel of Fire (London, 1930), pp. 80-106.
4 Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), pp. 78-121.
5 For example, John Dover Wilson, The Essential Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 1933), p. 117; and Miss Una Ellis-Fermor, The Jacobean Drama (London, 1936), p. 260.
6 The Mythical Sorrows of Shakespeare (Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, 1934), p. 17.
7 The Jacobean Shakespeare and “Measure for Measure” (Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy, 1937), p. 54.
8 Reimer, Der Begriß der Gnade in Shakespeares “Measure for Measure” (Marburg, 1937), esp. pp. 107-109; and Albrecht, Neue Untersuchungen zu Shakespeares Mass für Mass (Berlin, 1914), pp. 280-283.
9 “Measure for Measure,” Scrutiny, xi (Summer, 1942), 40-58; the quoted phrase is on p. 40.
10 “The Greatness of Measure for Measure,” Scrutiny, x (January, 1942), 234-247.
11 “Authority, Truth, and Justice in Measure for Measure,” RES, xvii (1941), 385-399. Compare the judgment of L. C. Knights, “The Ambiguity of Measure for Measure,” Scrutiny, x, 222: “Measure for Measure has an obvious relation to the old Moralities,” since its action turns “on certain moral problems, the nature of which is indicated by the recurrent use of the words 'scope,' 'liberty,' and 'restraint.' ” F. R. Leavis, p. 241, grants the play's relation to the Morality, adding rightly that “the Shakespearean use of convention permits far subtler attitudes and valuations than the Morality does.”
12 On this theme, see W. H. Durham, “Measure for Measure as Measure for Critics,” Essays in Criticism (University of California Publications in English), i (1929), 113-132.
12 New Cambridge edition of Measure for Measure (1922), p. xxxix.
14 Op. cit., p. 398
15 Shakespear Illustrated (1753), i, 36.
16 Shakespeare, 4th ed. revised (Boston, 1882), i, 420.
17 A recent example of this method is Henry H. Adams' study, English Domestic or Homiletic Tragedy, 1575 to 1642 (Columbia University Press, 1943). But see also Lily B. Campbell, Shakespeare's Tragic Heroes (Cambridge University Press, 1930); Willard Farnham, The Medieval Heritage of Elizabethan Tragedy (University of California Press, 1936); W. C. Curry, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns (Louisiana State University Press, 1937); and my Marlowe's Tamburlaine (Vanderbilt University Press, 1941).
18 The motif has been well employed, and its significance grasped, by T. S. Eliot in his picture of the Stranger on the road to Emmaus (The Waste Land, 362-363):
There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
19 See Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy (New York, 1937), passim.
20 Bradbrook, pp. 397-398.
21 See, e.g., the conclusion of The Castle of Perseverance. The verse “Misericordia et Veritas obviaverunt sibi; Justitia et Pax osculatae sunt” is to be found in the First Vespers of the office for Christmas Day; hence some of the spectators of Measure for Measure on St. Stephen's night, 1604, may well have remembered this verse. There is a dramatization of it in the Coventry Salutation, where the four characters kiss one another in token that Mercy and Truth, estranged since the first sin on earth, are reconciled by the promised Incarnation. For a complete survey of this theme, see Hope Traver, The Four Daughters of God (Bryn Mawr Monographs, Monograph Series, V. 6. Philadelphia, 1907); and her “The Four Daughters of God: A Mirror of Changing Doctrine,” PMLA, xl (1925), 44-92.
22 Besides being the “doubting disciple,” Thomas is the one to whom legend attributes the fifth clause of the Apostles' Creed: descendit ad inferna; tertia die resurrexit a mortuis. Has this, possibly, a connection with the fact that the Duke in his “descent” appears first to Friar Thomas? We will remember also that another Thomas (Aquinas) is to many Christians the “angelic doctor” or supreme instructor, particularly for friars. This suggests a reason, perhaps, for the Duke's request of Friar Thomas:
Supply me with the habit, and instruct me
How I may formally in person bear me
Like a true friar.
23 Other details from the play further support the conclusion that Shakespeare has chosen symbolic names for the characters. In the curtain speech to Act iii, the dramatist himself refers to Angelo as “angel on the outward side.” In Act iii, sc. i. he endows Mariana with a brother Frederick (a name which—as Shakespeare could have read in Camden's Britannia—means “rich peace”), and goes on to explain—symbolically, I think—that this brother's shipwreck has deprived Mariana of her natural dowry. Elsewhere, a nun named Francisca is provided as companion to Isabella, since the latter is a candidate for membership in an Order founded by St. Francis. Juliet has a name fitted to her feminine frailty, since she is, literally “the soft-haired.” The subplot of the play, likewise, makes use of aptly designative names: Elbow (an arm-of-the-law with no brain), Lucio (“light” in both morals and wit), and Froth, Pompey, and Mistress Overdone, whose names are made the occasion of word-play in Act ii. sc. i. The opening speech of Act iv. sc. iii. lists, with appropriate description, the characterizing names of Mistress Overdone's customers: Master Rash, Master Caper, Master Three-pile, young Dizzy, Master Deep-vow, etc. See also hereafter footnote 66.
24 See Tom Taylor, Life of B. R. Haydon, 3 vols. (London, 1853), i, 363. Keats, who was present at the discussion, cited this same passage as argument for Shakespeare's Christianity in a letter to Leigh Hunt a few months later (10 May 1817). I owe these references to my former colleague, Professor C. L. Finney.
25 Richmond Noble has well observed that Shakespeare's excellence in Biblical allusion consists not in the extensiveness of his references but in the aptness with which they are made. The way and the circumstances in which Biblical matters are touched upon often “springs a surprise, and the happiness of the application is afterwards a delight.” See Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge (London, 1935), pp. 98, 258-259.
26 Such, plainly, is the meaning; and yet, surprisingly, the few critics who have written comments on these lines miss almost completely this point. Bishop Warburton's remark that the phrase “all the souls that were” is “false divinity” and we should read “are” instead of “were” evidences on his part an unhistorical view of the Atonement. “I fear,” said the later Henley commenting on this remark of Warburton's, that “the player, in this instance, is a better divine than the prelate.” But Henley's own suggestion was far from accurate: he vaguely remarks that the words “evidently refer to Adam and Eve”—quite missing the point that they refer, rather, to Adam and Eve's progeny at the time of the Incarnation. Lately, R. W. Chambers has given as his opinion that the lines are based on the Sermon on the Mount and carry the teaching that “all men are pardoned sinners and must forgive” (italics mine). Chambers himself on second thought, I think, would have repudiated this as careless exegesis. Isabella's words go much beyond the Sermon on the Mount, for they refer to the total context within which that sermon has meaning. She is here talking primarily not ethics, but theology; making not a demand, but a plea; invoking not Angelo's moral nature but his Christian grace. She seeks to remind Angelo that man in his sins was interceded for by Christ the judge, and that therefore any judge who acknowledges Christ will see here a pattern for him to imitate, a measure to measure by. Isabella's plea fails not because Angelo is unjust, but because he is lacking in Christian grace. Lacking that, he soon himself falls into sin.
27 “Tithe,” the Folio reading, is preferable, I think, to “tilth,” the emendation suggested by Warburton and followed widely by later editors. “Tithe” makes the Duke's proverblike utterance carry the connotation of divine law as well as of natural law, thus suggesting both religious and secular sanction for the work that is about to be done.
28 Knight, pp. 89-90; Traversi, p. 58.
29 The commentary of Mt. x. 26, cited by Knight, is pertinent: “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and nothing hid, that shall not be known.” But even more pertinent, I think, is Rom. xiii. 11-12 (a passage which announces the beginning of the “Advent” season both in the Roman and Anglican uses): “It is time for you to awake out of sleep: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed, The night is far spent, and the day is at hand.”
30 See in this connection R. H. Bainton, “The parable of the Tares as the Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History, I (1932), 67-89. The correctness of reading “weed” is further apparent if we will compare an early line in Whetstone's Historie of Promos and Cassandra: “Loe, heare his [i.e., the Sovereign's] care to weed from good the yll” (Pt. I. i, i. 11.). Note also that Shakespeare returns to this image at the end of Act iii:
Twice treble shame on Angelo
To weed my vice and let his grow!
The lines here call to mind both the parable of the tares and, indirectly, the parable of the mote and the beam: thus delicately does Shakespeare join Scripture and experience in new combinations that can hardly be called Biblical allusions, yet rest plainly on Biblical foundations.
31 But possibly ‘let slip’ refers to the ‘weeds’ of the preceding line rather than to the ‘laws’ of line 19; the syntax is not quite certain. Such an alternative reading could, equally, be justified by reference to the Biblical parable, inasmuch as the sleeping men of the parable let the devil's tares slip into the field.
32 Still another example of what I shall call disjunctive metaphor occurs in ii. iii. 11-12, where the Provost speaks of Juliet as one “Who, falling in the flaws of her own youth, Hath blister'd her report.” Editors Malone, Steevens, and even Professor Parrott, have accepted Warburton's contention that “the metaphor requires that we should read: ”flames of her own youth.“ Now if Shakespeare's drama were ”classical“ in its thought patterns I would accept this emendation; for classical ethics generally explains moral evil as due to immoderation, i.e., to a ”flaming“ of the passions. But Christian theology explains sin as a ”flawed“ condition of man (Aquinas calls it the loss of ”original justice“) attended by an inclination of the will to ”fall.“ I would accept flaws, therefore, as a reading which accords with Christian presuppositions.
A less important example is the phrase “leaven'd . . . choice” (i. i. 51), which Warburton emended to “levelled . . . choice,” supposing an allusion to archery. Johnson, recognizing the original reading as “one of Shakespeare's harsh metaphors,” nevertheless defends leaven'd as meaning “suffered to work long in the mind.” I think he might have gone on to suggest, drawing analogy from the Biblical use of leaven, that the choice is one calculated to stir up and enliven the whole of Viennese society by its secret working. For that is in fact what it does do.
33 Compare Isabella's words in v. i. 116-118:
Then, O you blessed ministers above,
Keep me in patience, and with ripen'd time
Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up
34 Against Heresies, v.xv.2., trans. in The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, 1885), i, 543. For the same theme see also Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius, xii. i., trans. in Post-Nicene Fathers (New York, 1893), Second Series, v, 241.
35 Compare in our own time T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, where the Fisher King is the symbol of Divine Life, or Christ. Eliot, like Shakespeare in this present play, explores profoundly the twin and interlocking themes of fertility and faith, sex and religion.
36 See, e.g., Walter Lowrie, Monuments of the Early Church (New York, 1910), p. 232.
37 Later we learn (iii.i.265) that the Duke has a plot whereby the “corrupt deputy” may be “scaled.” The verb “to scale” may be expected to have multiple meanings in a play entitled Measure for Measure. The deputy is certainly going to be “weighed” and “measured on a scale”—perhaps also “scaled” of his layers of armor like a caught fish. This latter sense is in close accord with Dr. Johnson's comment: “To scale the deputy may be, to reach him, notwithstanding the elevation of his place; or it may be, to strip him and discover his nakedness, though armed and concealed by the investments of authority.”
38 See, e.g., Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma (Boston, 1897), iii, 307; and L. W. Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement (London, 1920), pp. 38 and 51.
39 See Grensted, pp. 32-55; and J. Tixeront, History of Dogmas, iii (St. Louis, Mo., 1926), 346-347.
40 See Grensted, p. 43.
41 For English translation, see A Library of Fathers (Oxford, 1850), Vol. iii, Pt. 2, pp. 569 ff.
42 See Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (New York, 1938), p. 229. An unpublished paper by Professor Marshall McLuhan first called my attention to this reference.
43 Ibid., p. 214.
44 Ibid., p. 205.
45 The Duke's counsel is stated in words theologically exact. You may, the Duke says, “redeem your brother from the angry law” and “do no stain to your most gracious person.” Note 1) that it is not a question, strictly speaking, of redeeming the brother from Angelo, but from the law; the law is making this ransom necessary; and 2) that Isabella's “person” will be maintained all the while in a state of “grace,” where stain of sin is impossible.
46 The Great Catechism, ch. xxiii, trans. Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, v, 493.
47 Ibid., pp. 493-494. See also ch. xxvi, p. 495: “He Who is at once the just, and good, and wise one, used His device, in which there was deception, for the salvation of him who had perished, and thus not only conferred benefit on the lost one, but on him, too, who had wrought our ruin.”
48 Ibid., ch. xxii, p. 493. Irenaeus, Augustine, Leo the Great, John of Damascus, even the early Epistle to Diognetus similarly emphasize the point that the work of salvation is most fittingly done by persuasion rather than by force, by the dictates of justice rather than by the efficacy of might. See Grensted, pp. 13, 36, 47, 49, 53. John of Damascus gives a particularly clear explanation: “For He who was omnipotent did not in His omnipotent authority and might lack the power to rescue man out of the hands of the tyrant. But the tyrant would have had a ground of complaint if, after he had overcome man, God should have used force against him. Wherefore God in His pity and love for man wished to reveal man himself as conqueror, and became man to restore like with like.” With this closing phrase compare the title of our play.
49 As a matter of fact, this question was debated in Shakespeare's day, having been stirred up by the Jesuit doctrine of “equivocation,” to which Puritan apologetic replied angrily.
50 The Great Catechism, ch. xxvi. See also his Against Eunomins, i. 10.
51 See “On Making Promises,” Conferences, trans. in Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, xi, 460 ff.
52 Compare Cassian's view here with Aristotle's dictum: “If the mark be noble, the cleverness is laudable, but if the mark be bad, the cleverness is mere smartness” (Nicomachean Ethics, vi, 1144a).
53 II Corinthians vi. 4-10.
54 Against Heresies, 444. xxiii. 1. I quote the translation appearing in Gustav Aulén, Christus Victor, trans. A. G. Hebert (London, 1931), p. 35.
55 Aulén, p. 20.
56 Ibid., p. 70.
57 Ibid., pp. 170 ff.
58 See Hosea, ii. 14-20; Isaiah, lxi. 10 and lxii. 5; John, iii. 29; and other passages hereafter noted.
59 The locus classicus for this idea is Ephesians, v. 22-end.
60 An allied parable is that of the Importunate Widow, which St. Augustine among others interprets as symbol of the widow Church counselled by her hidden Lord to plead unceasingly against her adversary the Devil until her Lord comes to deliver her. See R. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord, 9th ed. (New York, 1858), pp. 401-402,
61 See II Cor., xi. 2; also the passage in Ephesians already noted.
62 Here the Bride symbolizes “the holy city” for whom the King wipes away all tears and makes “all things new.” See Rev., xxi. 1-9 and compare the restoration of Vienna in Measure for Measure.
63 See Claude Chavasse, The Bride of Christ (London, 1939), p. 103.
64 Ibid., p. 104.
65 The words I have italicized require, it is true, only a ‘natural’ meaning; yet in their larger context they participate by analogy in supernatural story.
66 “Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline thine ear” (verse 10). “With joy and gladness shall they be brought, and shall enter into the Bang's palace” (verse 15). This psalm, as I have already noted, is one of the “proper” psalms for Christmas day, the day immediately preceding the first known performance of Measure for Measure. I quote the Prayer Book reading.
67 Ninth edition, pp. 18-19.
68 Ibid., p. 28.
69 Cf. Wilson Knight, p. 91: “The simplest way to focus correctly the quality and unity of Measure for Measure is to read it on the analogy of Jesus' parables.”
69a Shakespeare and the Popular Dramatic Tradition (King and Staples, 1944), p. 82; see also pp. 112 ff. This book of brilliant and pioneering criticism came to my attention only after the present essay had gone to the printer.
70 For an excellent discussion of the difference between Classical and Christian premises, particularly as they relate to the problems of evil, free-will, and human destiny, see Charles N. Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (Oxford Press, 1940), esp. Chaps. vi and x.
71 In other words, there are three levels on which we can do thinking about the Atonement: 1) on the level of everyday life in a Christian society, in which the process of atonement is, even though dimly, operative—occasionally producing “miracles” in that society; 2) on the level of Gospel story, which gives us the historic paradigm, the first display within history of the action of atonement; 3) on the level of theological speculation, which abstracts from history its intelligible pattern, and attempts to define and comment on the nature of atonement. Since Christian thinking moves easily from one level to another, it is impossible to say on which level Shakespeare began his thinking; but all three levels seem to be included in his completed vision of the story he has to tell. In the present paper I have invoked the Atonement theories of theologians, only because it is on this level that we try to give rational account of the Atonement and thus better understand it. Is there, indeed, any science other than theology by which plot can be measured at a supra-theatrical level?
72 True, Shakespeare does retain (Roman) classical names for two minor characters—Escalus and Varrius—while there is mention of such names as Flavius, Valencius, and Crassus (Act iv., sc. v.). All of these are represented as friends of the Duke in his secular rôle. They are evidence of Shakespeare's recognition of a Roman substrate in the Christian world, rather than evidence of a “Classical” world. Escalus—somewhat like Horatio in Hamlet—represents the common sense of the well educated secular man, and with this view acts as foil to the “religious” Angelo.
73 Starting from Lucio's reference in Act i, sc. ii. to an opposition between the Duke of Vienna and the King of Hungary, Richard G. White in his book Shakespeare's Scholar (New York, 1854), pp. 126-132, fixes the time of this play around 1485, the year in which a King of Hungary, Corvinus by name, marched on Vienna, capital city of Ferdinand III, Duke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor (the last emperor, in fact, to be crowned in Rome). Corvinus, notorious in history as a bloody “scourge,” was almost continually at war both with the Turks and with the Christian Emperor. Whetstone in his Heptameron (1582) had set the story of Promos and Cassandra in an unknown city named Julio “under the dominion of Corvinus King of Hungary and Bohemia.” Shakespeare sets his play under a ruler who is not a scourge but a reconciler. The happy ending is possible because the action takes place in a Christian state.
74 Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Modern State (London, 1935), p. 97.