What Some Modern Takes on Measure for Measure Miss
Shakespeare Wasn't Writing a Play for the Twenty-First Century
Last year, I read Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and watched it on stage. I had never seen the play before, but I’ve found myself returning again and again to it as an example which illustrates so well the modern struggle to understand traditional cultures (i.e., all cultures before the nineteenth century, and the cultures of most non-Western nations today). Recently, I heard yet again an interpretation of the play which struck me as missing something remarkably important. It was in the vein of all interpretations I have heard on the play, all of which fail to take into account the culture in which the play was set (and written). I’m sure that someone has already written a better analysis than I can, one which makes the points I’d like to make, but I haven’t had time to peruse the scholarship. Here are my two cents, for what they’re worth. I have no expertise on the play, but everything I have to say here is quite obvious to anyone who can take off the peculiar blinders modernity places upon us.
A Modern Play?
I’ve now heard multiple times that Measure for Measure is a modern play, because it resonates with the Me Too Era: a powerful man of authority demands that an innocent women have sex with him in order to obtain a favor – in this case the life of her condemned brother. That Shakespeare’s plays contain elements which immediately resonate with us demonstrates their timelessness, but they aren’t simply timeless. The context in which they take place matters. When reading them, we have to consider lenses beyond simply, “What can we see of ourselves and our own time in this play?”
What context must we consider? First, that Isabella is about to become a nun and enter a convent.
The professor I heard lecturing on the play recently (in a video lecture) emphasized that Isabella’s chastity was her choice. He emphasized that she desired a certain way of life. Rather than make a moral statement about chastity or life devoted to God, he simply said that she didn’t want to have sex and that she chose to remain a virgin. In characteristically modern fashion, the only judgement he can make is that she isn’t consenting to Angelo’s desire to have sex with her. To hear the professor talk about it, she and Angelo are the only two parties in the case.
Some of us would say that she didn’t choose that life, but that she was called to it. If Isabella were here, that is probably what she would say. She didn’t refuse Angelo because she didn’t want to have sex, but because she had a duty to God.
As soon as Isabella goes from innocent victim to voice of moral force, the professor turns on her. He is with her when she refuses Angelo, but not when she says that her brother’s life is not worth her chastity. He recoils, as most modern audiences do, at what he perceives as her selfishness.
It is notable at this juncture that Isabella not only says that her brother’s life is not worth her chastity, she says that she is sure her brother will agree. Sadly, he does not. Later, her brother (Claudio) begs her to have sex with Angelo, because if she could just see her way to doing this Claudio might go free. As revolting as her brother’s behavior is, he makes an argument that resonates with us today. According to him, it is simply a matter of self-interest. His self-interest is in going free and her self-interest is in staying chaste. She is being stubborn by not giving in. Then, he invokes loyalty: she is his sister and she should sacrifice her honor for his life.
Loyalty is one of those things modern audiences struggle with, but we sort of get what he means here. She was, like, born to the same parents as him and presumably loves him since they, you know, grew up together. She is sad that he will die.
But she also condemns him in this scene for the immorality of what he is proposing and she deplores his behavior. Isabella knows that she has a higher loyalty even than to her closest family members: loyalty to God. Modern audiences sometimes struggle with this: did she really believe that? Presumably, if she is going into the nunnery she believes it. She knows that Jesus said that his followers must place loyalty to him above loyalty to even their closest family. She knows that the first commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” and that all other duties come after that.
It is easy in a secular society to forget that Shakespeare’s world, and Isabella’s, was pervaded by religion in every aspect of daily life. Human beings sinned then, just as much as now, otherwise the events of the play would have been implausible at the time. But the average citizen would have taken the demands of religion seriously in a way most people do not today. Isabella’s chastity isn’t her choice – it is her duty to God. Christians are told that their body is a temple, and that means something (especially to someone who is to serve in a holy office). It means there is something sacred about the human body, and we are to sanctify it and not to sully it.
Sanctity, like loyalty, is one of those concepts modern audiences struggle with.1 Jonathan Haidt, in A Righteous Mind, argues that educated, Western citizens are unique in human history in lacking strong impulses on certain moral foundations, including loyalty and sanctity. It isn’t that we are less moral than other societies, but that our conceptions of morality tend to lack certain dimensions found in traditional cultures throughout the world and throughout history.2 In other words, we don’t see the importance of Isabella’s chastity, because we don’t understand the consequences of its loss.
Honor:
Haidt doesn’t spend much time on honor, but honor is clearly one of the most lacking concepts in modern discourse. Put simply: if Isabella gave in to Angelo, it would be a dishonor to her, a dishonor to her family, and a dishonor to God. Her personal honor alone was worth more than death. This seems shocking to us, until we remember that Alexander Hamilton died for his personal honor, and that his wasn’t an uncommon story.