“Problem plays” are plays that are ostensible comedies, but they have some elements that don’t sit well with modern audiences. They may have some point that just hasn’t aged well, or there just could be something there that doesn’t seem right. Maybe a character was punished too severely or not enough. Maybe the romantic couple at the center of the play just don’t feel right due to all manner of in-play circumstances. There’s usually some bed tricks going on where someone will be tricked into having sex with someone other than the person he wants to have sex with. Point is, the happy ending doesn’t seem too happy.
Measure for Measure, a play I mostly like, fits that description to a “T”.
Notable cast members: This one may be more notable for who isn’t in it, as the BBC approached Alec Guinness to play the Duke. He declined, and the production actually went through thirty-one actors before finding one, namely Kenneth Colley, an actor probably best recognized for playing Admiral Piett in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, so somehow they kept the Star Wars influence in the production.
Trivia: The best trivia for this one comes from the casting note above. I taught Measure for Measure exactly once, and while it didn’t turn out too badly, the idea I used was, since it was an honors class, they would have been somewhat familiar with the Shakespearean basics like Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, so I could go for some of the higher quality but lesser known plays. On day one, I surveyed the class on what they’d read only to learn in most cases, it was maybe the first page of Romeo and Juliet. Since then, I prefer to ask ahead before making assumptions, so lessons learned all around.
The play: PBS and the BBC have a co-production they pull out once in a while called Shakespeare Uncovered, and the third batch of episodes did include one for Measure for Measure. Each episode features a different actor or sometimes a director looking into an individual play (sometimes two connected ones), and for this one, actress Romola Garai reframed this play in a way that made me change my mind on some key aspects.
See, the basic plot has novice nun Isabella summoned to Venice to try to convince the Duke’s surrogate Angelo in not executing her brother Claudio for the crime of sex outside of marriage because he knocked up his fiancee Juliet. Angelo, who is supposed to be upright and righteous, says he will if Isabella sleeps with him. Isabella cherishes her own virginity above all else–that’s her stated reason for becoming a nun, not any sort of religious faith–and she’s outraged and horrified as she should be. Claudio is as well, initially, but then he gets a little worried since he’s going to be executed the next day for fornication with a woman he was going to marry anyway, so he suggests maybe she should. It’s an act of fear and somewhat understandable. Isabella’s reaction, though, always struck me as very harsh as she berates her brother for not willing to die for her virginity, even going so far as to say their mother must have cheated on their father because only a bastard would even suggest such things. Claudio apologizes and she forgets about it. As I said, that always struck me as harsh.
Then I saw Garai’s episode, and she reframed the whole story in light of #MeToo, and I changed my mind on the harshness. I still think Claudio’s moment of weakness is understandable, but I get Isabella’s reluctance more. Granted, Shakespeare didn’t see it that way because he probably couldn’t, but there’s something to a lot of his verse to allow future audiences to adapt it our own times and still make it work.
But this is a problem play, and that means there are problems. The Duke needs to step away from power to clear his head, and he knows he hasn’t been the best moral leader for the city of Venice, so he leaves the upright Angelo in charge to clean the place up. There’s a law on the books against sex outside of marriage, so that means he comes down hard on Claudio and the obviously pregnant Juliet, but also the whorehouses. But his agents aren’t above employing form whorehouse employees into the justice system, and while the fairly harmless Claudio goes to jail, his best friend Lucio, described by Shakespeare as a “fantastic” and basically a libertine, wanders all over the place without a worry until the end of the play when the Duke reveals he’d been disguised as a friar the whole time, watching everyone.
Beyond the obvious issues of Lucio’s wanderings while other people are arrested haphazardly, we also see that while Isabella values her own chastity, she doesn’t mind helping other women lose theirs when she does a bed trick with Angelo, all under the Duke’s advice. Angelo left a woman at the altar, the Duke knows this, and he still thinks Angelo is an upright man? Lucio is forced to marry an unseen prostitute he’d knocked up, and is that a proper punishment for making jokes at the Duke’s expense to the Duke’s face? And finally, the last lines of the play are the Duke proposing marriage to Isabella. She has no reply. Does she say yes? In this version, she does silently, taking his hand and walking off with him, both all smiles. But there’s no real courtship involved.
I had a professor in grad school who told me she saw that play out well exactly twice. In one version, Isabella shook her head “no” and walked away. In the other, while the dialogue was the same, the delivery wasn’t, so the Duke and Isabella’s conversations throughout the play take the tone of two lovers having romantic conversations, so when he does propose, the audience had seen the two fall in love despite the circumstances. This production deos neither.
Still, I rather like Measure for Measure. It’s messy, but it works. I think you could make the case that it is less of a problem play and more of a challenging one to make all the elements work, and I never even got into the convicted murderer who ultimately gets a pardon because he basically won’t leave his cell for his execution because he just doesn’t feel like it.
Grade: I’m giving this one an A-. Some of that may be going on a curve. By this point, the BBC more or less knows what’s doing, and this one may be my favorite play from the first series of episodes.
Next: Shakespeare’s last history play, co-written with his successor with the company John Fletcher, the biographical work Henry VIII.
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