Shakespeare 2.0 ?

 

I don’t think that I ever was so little convinced of anything theoretical I have written than what I have lately written on history and fiction. That any part of my theory has so little to do with what I think really happens when I am reading. I adjusted it a bit (see below) but this still doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the matter. On the other hand, rereading my last post on “Measure for Measure”, I was rather impressed. Maybe, after what feels like months that were equally dull and stressful, I was just grateful for any kind of auto-stimulation. Especially as I had just “had” my blog “back” after the devastation I already knew the Windows 10 upgrade would wreak on my digital environment … So, when everything unexpectedly worked fine again, I celebrated by reading my last post and - NOT sorry to say this! – was totally fascinated with what I had written. I had dealt with so many issues I could never resolve but had always been struggling with in “Shakespeare” that I suddenly felt closer to the matter not just by a step but by some kind of extended journey. And I couldn’t help feeling that it must have had something to do with seriously trying to bring “history” into it. That I achieved to do this in the right way - the way I am always doing it, dealing with text – and history! – not as something static that is already labelled and packed by historians of literature but as a dynamic process that I can only figure out by bringing myself into it. As the “adventurer” who is riding the vortex towards the centre of the text – without knowing from the beginning where this journey will lead. Bringing “history” into it, I have always been wary of slowing this process down by encumbering it with “rubble” that doesn’t belong or jam it with common prejudice. And I am rather proud to have figured out how to avoid this. I think what I have done right is to instrumentalize “history” for my search for the TEXT CENTRE – and, observing this, I am now finally able to explain why I cling to this notion of a “text centre” – and thereby necessarily to the notion of a “correct” interpretation, or at least a leading idea of what a text is about – knowing that there is no such thing. But without the IDEA of it there can be no vortex movement, and accordingly no ride, no fun, and no adventure. Weirdly, without “interpretation”, reading just becomes predictable and boring. (Which is, strangely, what I always felt to be the only thing deconstructivism has achieved, even though the idea was probably the contrary. Until I found out that I had to take deconstructivism seriously – that is, to do my own thing and “deconstruct” texts as if they were living beings with a heart and a brain and intestines, not just a bunch of semantic relations …) The ideal is always not to nail the MEANING of a text – even though this is always part of the game – but to have the best ride imaginable because this is what the text was written for. I know this sounds mad, but I know exactly what I mean as I remember exactly how I felt reading “The Master and Margarita” where I had the best ride I can remember in a long time - when reading becomes so much like life at its best: the pure joy of being alive, ESPECIALLY in the middle of profound sadness and ultimate catastrophe … Of course, my idea of HISTORIC reading must aspire to this standard. That means, the game doesn’t end when I think I can explain the text historically = determine what it must have meant at the time - as if there was a single representative mindset it has to be brought in line with. It ends when I have found out why THIS SINGULAR TEXT might have MOVED people at the time, and in what way. I don’t seriously believe, by the way, that I am ever going to find this out “for real”, but by trying to I am learning infinitely more about a historic text. In this case, it felt kind of like “Shakespeare 2.0”.

In fact, I hate to be so much “in theory mode” as these bits are always such a pain to write, and I am never satisfied with them. But just now I had an experience that showed me one more time how daring to THINK theoretically – not just adopt the theories of others but to find out what thoughts are at the bottom of my own experience – helps me to a deeper understanding of text, and life, which is the ultimate goal. Especially because it was about a kind of texts I am not good with, as I have neither patience for them nor am I feeling equal to them: Paintings. Usually I cannot be bothered to look at paintings because – as with poems! – it seems too much of an effort. And this really is a shame! 

A few weeks ago, I ended up at a small museum dedicated to an unknown but very gifted surrealistic artist, just because my sister invited my niece, her goddaughter, to my mother’s house for a Harry Potter concert which she couldn’t attend herself because of corona regulations, and was looking for somewhere they both could go, her not being vaccinated … As everybody joined them, I went as well, and, arriving there, I must admit my thoughts were: Now I am going to freeze my butt off in this joint without proper heating or a toilet and have to look at a hundred paintings that are all identical … I was right about the first bit. The paintings, as it turned out, were fascinating. Not because they were great. I mean, they were good, but there is hardly any “beauty” in surrealistic paintings. It kind of defeats the purpose. Nonetheless they were amazing exactly because nothing “enthusiastic” or too emotional distracted me from watching myself getting involved with them. And it was good that there were so many, as I didn’t have to stare at a single one, straining to figure out what it might mean. Within a short time I realized that I loved the game, and that I was good at it, and I remembered that surrealistic paintings had been the only kind I had been passionate about a long, long time ago … I didn’t know why, even then, and I may have been a totally different person at the time, but I tend to think that I always had in me what I WANTED to be, and that this led to what I am now. And I came to the conclusion that I had loved them because every single one – be it hilarious, or mysterious, or depressing … - is telling you that the world is not fixed by any rules you have to obey, but that it is changeable in any way you like and that, at any point in time and space, it contains an INFINITY of possibilities. I figure that, for many people, this infinite complexity of the world is a major source of anxiety and depression, whereas for me it is the inexhaustible well of my happiness. This is the innermost reason I look down on most people – even though I know I am just lucky, or probably not quite right in the head because I cannot take the world seriously in the same way they do. But I cannot help to be happy about it and completely agree with “The Divine Comedy” in the respect that “if I had to choose between then and now, I’d choose NOW” – always! Even though I know that I was younger and happier two years ago, and the world was a better place, and I was just going to London to see “Uncle Vanya”, and did see it right before everything was closed down. Now I am happy to go to the cinema without having to be tested and see a mediocre film. (Can somebody tell my why “Belfast” ended up with 7 Oscar nominations? Probably just because there is virtually nothing else!!??) - NOW might be shit, and probably is shit – didn’t we all wonder what Putin was planning, now we know! – but I think we are over most of the virus, and we have a new government (after 16 years!), and I can unstop my ears and listen to NEW bullshit ... So, right in the middle of this shit, I am still happy because HERE AND NOW is the place where I am “grateful to be alive at the same time as you” (Coldplay), and where anything can happen at any moment.

(I suppose the emphasis on “shit” comes from watching “The Wire”, which I have never watched before and of which I need a bite every day, otherwise I am not happy. A lot of it consists of “shit”, “fuck”, “nigger”, and “(yo,) man”, but mostly it is so sophisticated and complex that I still don’t get it. But I am working on it relentlessly because this shit really is amazing. There is a scene that stretches out over a few minutes where two detectives are going over an old crime scene and where the conversation consists of three phrases: “fuck”, “fuck you”, and “motherfucker”. It’s beautiful!) 

But – BACK TO MY PURPOSE! This is as good a transition as any because: how should I get back from praising the here and now into “deep history”? It is just what struck me as the most notorious sentence in HOLINSHED’S CHRONICLE. This is what I am just reading, and, even though it is partially a pain to read, I cannot stop reading it. I have downloaded the complete text from Project Gutenberg and couldn’t skip so much as a single paragraph, apart from the endless lists, though I even read through a few of these. I couldn’t stop because I realized that this is exactly what I need for continuing with “Shakespeare 2.0”. For one thing because the amount of information and history that Raphael Holinshed collected is insane. He must have been a bit insane, not just because he did things like sailing the whole coast of Britain to include the isles in his description, but in a good way that corresponds with something very important “in” his time that I kind of knew but never took into account quite enough. Just looking at FICTIONAL texts that are “with one foot” deeply rooted in tradition – and us, the readers, using traditional patterns of thinking to read them! – one can never begin to appreciate what DYNAMIC times these were. (It just strikes me that this might actually be the emotional impetus behind “time” in Shakespeare!) This was when the Middle-ages were ACTUALLY ending – not, as we learned in school, because a German priest nailed his ideas to a church door, but because people IN PRACTICE had given up the idea that God determines everything probably ages ago – even though this was the official doctrine -  and had started to make money by means of globalized trade, by printing books or playing theatre, and zealously improving their lives in any way imaginable – all the time still complaining about the hubris and greediness of their contemporaries who were trying to get ahead of God’s plan. (As it turned out, Protestantism became this great enterprise of aligning religion with capitalism, but - quite like we Europeans of the 21^st century - people probably didn’t realize that “time” had already passed them by!) And where lots of money had already been made and handed down to the descendants, people suddenly might have found the time to think about sailing the coast of Britain or putting every little shit thing from the brewing of ale to the amount of conies in a certain place to paper and have it printed … There must have been a great acute consciousness of these dynamics in Elizabethan society, though. Lots of minds suddenly getting out from under the weight of traditions and the rigidness of received ideas, all kind of fusing together – amongst them this one guy called William Shakespeare who – even with one foot deeply rooted in literary tradition, as all great writers have to be - came (in my opinion!) to know more about the human soul than Freud ever did, just by digging ruthlessly into it with a quill. I exaggerated a bit and focused on the contradiction on purpose to emphasize the dynamics, but this is the kind of reality reading Holinshed constantly evokes in me. And it strikes me as exactly the right kind for tackling “Shakespeare” historically.

Besides, it was really useful to read some actual history to check my theories about it. Holinshed is a model historian, no doubt. Even by what I suppose to be contemporary standards, as to his endeavour to know and critically evaluate his sources, exactness, and even scientific reasoning, he is top-notch. Depending on their subject, contemporary historians just have more reliable sources or methods of evaluation at their disposal. Some ways of explaining things may appear weird to us, and some explanations are objectively false, but the way of explaining everything scientifically without once recurring on outdated notions like “God’s will” or “plan” far exceeds what I would have expected. And he is an absolute stickler for detail, what, I suppose, is required in a good historian. But – a thing not quite unknown to me! – he has serious issues about stopping himself. Like myself, he is compulsive about explanations and loves adding still one more example to prove his point. And, quite like a modern social scientist, he tries to add every statistic he can get his hands on. This was quite an eye-opener because I wasn’t aware that this EMPIRICISM started so much earlier than the 19^th century! As a rule, this should make his compilation unreadable for non-historians, and it is sorely trying my patience and time budget, but it also enabled me to nail what I already knew to be the most important thing about history. Of course it is not “just” stories but this inexhaustible DATABASE of knowledge about a certain period in time – inexhaustible because there can always be more knowledge discovered and added at any time, either by me – for my own personal use – or in general, by historians. Such a database exists in me as well as outside of me, and even the part that is in me is already kind of infinite and mostly inaccessible because the biggest part of it is just a huge, disorganized heap of PASSIVE knowledge. And I can only guess at how big it must be by how appalling I am at quizzes in general and how great I am at multiple choice. And this is where the bit about story-telling comes in which I have already written about and was dissatisfied with. As reading Holinshed proved, history-writing as such is not, or not mainly, story-telling but collecting information about what existed and trying to explain how we came from point A to point B. (For Holinshed himself, though, the big “database part” of his chronicle was not history but a minute description of Britain at present. For us it becomes a part of the historic “knowledge base”.) As in fact quite often, the etymology got it exactly right by identifying “history” with “knowledge”. Statistics about conies are not stories, but they are meaningless unless context is added. Conies were a “commodity” at the time, not a pest, a “natural resource”, and why were they? This is where the story-telling begins because this strange fact of never leaving out the conies sparked my imagination about how people might have lived in these rural places, and from there it is only a small step towards rudimentary stories that are – especially for somebody like me who was greedy for stories from the time I began to think and speak – the best means to draw the adherent facts out of the database. There is a reason why I automatically came to equate history with story-telling.

„Measure for Measure“ – tragedy, comedy, and theodicy

 

At the beginning of Holinshed’s chronicle – which I took up after my reading „Measure for Measure“  – King Richard II, who was still a boy, is taking over the throne from his grandfather. I always thought it to be some kind of convention to picture a country in distress over the death of a king. The king is dead, long live the king! – what’s the big deal? After my close reading of “Measure for Measure”, though, I read the chronicle differently. It’s basically rather boring with all these people meaning nothing to me, the painstaking description of coronation festivities and rites, a bunch of insignificant skirmishes with the Scots and the French … but it suddenly all began to make sense when I hit on a sentence that I might have overlooked before:

For, if by their example the king were trained to goodnesse, all should be well; but if he declined through their sufferance from the right waie, the people and the kingdome were like to fall in danger to perish.

What Holinshed is writing about – though you don’t notice it on the surface because everything sounds rather matter of fact and subdued – is a country in CRISIS after the decease of a monarch and the succession of a child to the throne. It had to be newly established who was close to the king and therefore in a position of power, parliaments had to be held to keep dissensions from getting out of hand, the Londoners stepped forward to confirm their special status, and the old enemies, sniffing opportunity, rallied their troops …

I think I knew enough of English history – not least from reading Shakespeare! - to be aware of this recurrent crisis, but this bit of historic reading showed me that it still hadn’t “sunk in”. I suddenly got a much clearer idea of the impact of the political situation on people’s lives and of what this meant for writing for the stage. Watching the RSC’s most recent production of “Measure for Measure” on DVD, I got first involved with the character of the Duke – probably the most boring major character in the play! But how Antony Byrne played him – kind of stressed and harassed and desperately ironic about the godawful mess he has to clean up – made me notice his pivotal role. I might marginalize him READING the play and focus on the characters with interesting predicaments, but we find him on the stage a considerable part of the time, and a good actor must needs do something with this. It might have turned out rather the reverse on an Elizabethan stage, but it served the purpose of making me notice what must always have been significant about him: that he is IMPORTANT, that he is IN CHARGE, and that he is HUMAN. The last feature might have got underplayed in Elizabethan times, and probably gets overplayed on a contemporary stage, but I think Shakespeare – like Holinshed! – was well aware of it. The sovereign, though prone to human failure, CANNOT fail because, being God’s representative on earth, the commonwealth directly depends on his “goodness”. I might be annoyed with him for using a deputy to clean up his mess – my first impression that he is acting deviously, not really wanting to promote Angelo but looking for somebody he can fire, might be warranted – but he has a serious reason for acting like this. Having failed in keeping the state in good order so far by slackening the reins, he really needs a plan.

The next thing I realized and found rather exciting is the way Shakespeare introduces us to an entire contemporary society and its problems in comical abbreviation. There is the clergy, nuns as representatives of a religious order, soldiers, the idle upper classes, sex workers, a bawd, a notorious criminal, a henchman, a completely useless member of law enforcement … I might have made a list earlier because this makes me so much more aware of what is MISSING. The overall impression of a dysfunctional society is warranted insofar as there is not a single person here who actually does something USEFUL or beneficiary. There are no craftspeople, no shopkeepers, no doctors, nobody in short of any trade or occupation that actually benefits society. Of course a henchman does that, in a way, but we are explicitly told that he is considered to be on the same social level as a bawd. Soldiers can be useful - IF there is a war on. If there is not – which is the normal state of affairs at the time - they become a problem. In fact, the most productive people on this stage are the sex workers - which is stated ironically but nonetheless! I actually looked up a word, as I didn’t know exactly what “mitigation” means. Of course “Madam Mitigation” – like “Mistress Overdone” - is meant to ridicule and scorn the character of a prostitute, but there is a serious argument behind it which I don’t think people at the time would just have brushed aside as THIS predicament certainly hasn’t changed. Prostitution has always served a social purpose – though, for various reasons, it was never seen as ideal – and must therefore be subject to mitigating circumstances. Obviously, in “Measure for Measure” extramarital intercourse is singled out as the root of all evils, but brothels as well as monasteries are SOLUTIONS for a problem that cannot be resolved in an entirely satisfactory way. And, unlike in medieval times, NEITHER of them was seen as ideal. At least I cannot imagine that a society that recently dismantled monasteries with greater efficiency than it could ever get rid of brothels held (catholic!) monasteries in that much higher esteem! The desirable solution for the problem is obviously MARRIAGE.

The next important observation I made has to do with WHY extramarital intercourse actually was considered so dangerous that it had to be punished by death. Even though nobody would deny that there have to be mitigating circumstances – especially in a case like Claudio’s where the couple is as good as married – there is also nobody – least of all the culprits! – to deny that they have committed a criminal offence. I think this is our main issue in taking this play seriously, as few (of the “W(hite)E(ducated)I(ndividualist)R(ich)D(emocratic)”) people today would think of it in this way. In our day and age, sexual love as such has a positive connotation and is fundamentally linked to our concept of happiness. Romantic comedy nowadays typically ends with two people embracing – not with two people in front of an altar. In complete opposition to this, in “Measure for Measure” sexual love is – without exception! – not seen as something good and conducive to happiness, but as dangerous and destructive, a cancer eating into society and the individual peace of mind. I am rather certain that – like most people nowadays wouldn’t perceive romantic comedy as representing their reality! – most Elizabethans wouldn’t have taken such a grim view on sexual love. Basically, both conceptions are rooted in the INEVITABILITY of sexual love – something that has never changed! But I think it is really important to take this statement seriously for understanding the historic impact of the play. Sexual love, in “Measure for Measure”, is certainly not the way to heaven but rather a dangerous OBSTACLE on this way. I was delighted when I hit on the reason for this explicitly stated in Angelo’s monologue after he has fallen in love with Isabel. For him, it is not at all a pleasant experience but something that is deeply troubling and scary because it has broken up his direct connection with God.

 

When I would pray and think, I think and pray

To several subjects. Heaven has my empty words,

Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue,

Anchors on Isabel. Heaven in my mouth,

As if I did but only chew his name,

And in my heart the strong and swelling evil 

Of my conception …

 

Obviously, it SHOULD be the other way round. God is only real and can become a positive agent in people’s lives, when they are actually at the centre of it: in their heart and not just in their mouth. In fact, it is Protestantism in a nutshell: without this direct relationship with God, a human being cannot achieve a state of grace and thrive. This is what “goodnesse” in Holinshed means: not “humanity” – as “we” might conceive it – but BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD and therefore an instrument for God’s grace to become human reality. It is an inhuman conception for us that Angelo hates Isabel for “loving” her, but in this context it makes complete sense.

Having understood this, I also understood why the idea of individual happiness not being an issue in “Shakespeare” – which came up in my discussion with Claudia - had been wrong. Comedy and tragedy are – and always have been - very much about individual happiness and unhappiness. It is just that the concept itself has changed a great deal.

I had already had this intuition that it might further the understanding of the play to dislike Angelo LESS, respectively show him as a less disagreeable character on stage. I think we tend to dislike him FROM THE BEGINNING as somebody who is mostly preoccupied with his piety and his career, and doesn’t care about other human beings. At the time this was probably not considered such a bad thing! And speaking names in “Shakespeare” are always making a statement. In the beginning, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to present him as the ideal candidate for taking over from the Duke. In one important respect at least he must have been a role model. As we have to take his monologue seriously, his connection with God so far had been genuine and therefore conducive to his personal success and happiness. Within the moral argument of the play, Angelo takes the role of the fallen angel who succumbs to the human weakness of falling in love. Or should I rather say MALE weakness?! Questioning everything I found weird, I had difficulties to swallow the argument that the woman is GUILTIER than the man when she consents to forbidden intercourse. I think the reason is that the temptation for her was considered to be much smaller. Sexual love – as I had already noticed in “Troilus and Cressida” – was mainly seen as a male issue. One so widespread that there HAD to be mitigating circumstances! For Angelo, to desire forbidden sex is therefore a comparatively small digression. A small step from the straight and narrow path that nonetheless leads to tremendous and dire consequences for himself and others. Blackmailing a virgin into sexual intercourse and killing her brother notwithstanding, for fear that it might come out, are mortal offences that would NOT warrant the mitigating circumstances he denies Claudio. Not to mention the damage to the justice of the state he is put in charge of … What we have here is genuine TRAGEDY – as good as it gets!

Having got so far, I realized WHY, on the whole, I hadn’t liked the RSC’s production that much. I found it useful, as I pointed out, because watching Antony Byrne made me focus on an interesting issue, but he was the ONLY actor on stage who invested his character with a sense of URGENCY which the other characters should have showed as well.  Even more so, as it is essential to understand that dire things – like Isabel discovering that her brother will be executed the next morning if she doesn’t do anything about it, or Angelo inconveniently falling in love – happen to people suddenly, brutally, and stressfully, not letting them time to think or take precautions. There is this strange bit where people start laughing – when Isabel says exasperatedly that she has no superfluous leisure. In fact, this is one of these extremely naturalistic moments in “Shakespeare” where she reacts exactly as most people under pressure would react! People laughing proves that they must have got it completely wrong on the stage. 

To this end, I think, they should have upped the pace a bit – or considerably! – so as to make it easier for the actors to react spontaneously. But I think they decided against this on purpose, in order not to lose the really complex discussions and arguments about justice that, content-wise, are the centre of the play. Trying to think historically, I also realized that this problem probably didn’t exist on an Elizabethan stage. I cannot know if I am right but have this rather stubborn opinion that they must have played virtually the complete text, just a lot faster. It would still have taken more time than the three hours we are used to, but the problem of a play becoming too long probably didn’t exist because of the totally different theatre situation. Even on the balconies, people would not have been glued to their seats, eyes fixed on the stage, straining to understand what is happening there. It would rather have been like being in a market place, hearing people making speeches or observing them having an argument. They wouldn’t have understood or listened to every word but would have felt much more IMPLICATED. And actually being emotionally implicated makes us understand much faster on a more complex level than straining to understand intellectually what is going on. I find it rather interesting that there might be a historic issue not just of story-telling that makes this play less easily accessible to us but also one of actually performing it on the stage.

Having dwelled on TRAGEDY so far, I understand the reason why people might want to talk of “tragicomedy” referring to “Measure for Measure”, though I personally think this category is misapplied in “Shakespeare”. Chekhov’s plays, for example, are genuine tragicomedies because the FUSION is significant. Life is tragic at the same time as it is futile and ridiculous. In “Shakespeare”, on the contrary, it is significant to have them SEPARATED. Coming to the beginning of act 3 of “Measure for Measure”, I noticed already the first time I read it, that something decisive is happening there, like a sea-change, and that I should get back to this bit. Initially it felt like a good play just had been “killed” and interesting psychological predicaments been turned into slapstick COMEDY. After my close historic reading, having worked my way through to the first scene of act 3 again, this impression had radically changed. I felt that something really interesting was happening there and was thrilled to discover the exact moment where it does. It is, in my opinion, a rather inconspicuous sentence Isabel says to the Duke (in disguise) in the first scene of act 3:

But, O, how much is the good Duke deceiv’d in Angelo! IF EVER HE RETURN, AND I CAN SPEAK TO HIM, I WILL OPEN MY LIPS IN VAIN, OR DISCOVER HIS GOVERNMENT.

With all the discoveries about Angelo in mind, I identified this as a wish to speak with God DIRECTLY and to put herself entirely under their “government”. Strictly speaking, she does not utter a wish to speak with God but with their deputy, the Duke, but, as I had understood by now, in a certain respect they are ONE AND THE SAME. As I noted earlier, the simultaneousness of humanity and divinity in a ruler is a problem addressed in the play. It is also a FACT that could not be challenged. The painstaking description of coronation rites in Holinshed has a purpose: to affirm that the king has been correctly and completely invested with this divinity and has obtained the right to act in God’s place. As the ONLY person on earth, because he has literally been invested with a second – divine – character on top of his human one. Just coming out of the cinema after having seen “Margarete – Queen of the North”, Claudia and I agreed that this is a fascinating issue, even to the present day.  I realize that my interest in “The Crown” hinges exactly on this: the personal consequences of having this divine character imposed on not even very special human beings. For somebody born in the 20^th century this might appear surreal and outdated, for Elizabethans it was an existential issue.   

(The latter made me aware of a minor (?) issue about historical exactness that had been bothering me before. The Duke, in this play and others, is certainly TREATED as if he was the king, but he is not. Dukes don’t get crowned or invested, at least I have never heard of such a thing. I suppose they kind of take over God’s rule by being sworn to a king. Maybe I am wrong, or – as I am trying to explain this for the time being – the dukes in Shakespeare’s comedies are supposed to “stand in” for the king because a king could never get dragged into comedy – dressing up in monk’s robes and personally conducting a “mummery” like this one!) 

As Isabel, though she doesn’t realize this, has actually spoken to God’s deputy, there is now a real chance that things will take a turn for the better – and further INTERESTING things may happen. At this point, I definitely had developed an understanding for the Elizabethan’s delight in “stupid” comedy plots the outcome of which they had already been told. It appears rather cruel for the Duke to leave Isabel in the dark about Claudio being alive – but he needs her to be in the dark for his plan to work. I am sure Elizabethans enjoyed the slapstick, but they would have enjoyed the argument as well. God was their REALITY, an actual power that works predominantly in the dark. Their plan is concealed from humans who have to put their trust entirely in God’s “goodness” to benefit from it. On the other hand - as will become apparent when Isabel is called upon to forgive Angelo and beg for his pardon – God needs “good” people who put their trust in them to work their plan. This UNEXPECTED turn contains a much stronger argument about grace overruling justice than human wit could ever make. (So far, showing mercy, as Angelo claims, has in fact just led to making things worse!) God’s grace cannot be DESERVED – as Angelo clearly has forfeited it! – but it may HAPPEN nonetheless - through successful communication with God as a MUTUAL act. It even makes complete sense for Isabel to be joined with the Duke BECAUSE it is against her wish. Perfect happiness can only be achieved by submitting entirely to God’s will.

There were multiple reasons for people at the time to go to the theatre for entertainment – as there are today! Verbal and physical slapstick was certainly one of them – as was elaborate fighting as well as blood and gore. They liked to see beautiful costumes and dancing – as “we” do! – but also must have enjoyed LISTENING to cleverly phrased arguments probably more than we do. (They tend to become the dreary bits in “Shakespeare”!) Preferring some of these might lead to a preference for either tragedy or comedy, but neither of these contains a SUFFICIENT reason for the strong tendency of popular plots to fall under either category. Comedy and tragedy at the time were rather a matter of THEODICY. Trying to change my mindset to “Elizabethan”, I HAVE to deal with the question how chaos and suffering can come into a world that is ruled by God. Personally, I find this question entirely expendable, but, at least where COMEDY is concerned, I would have continued to scratch the surface without understanding this. Tragedy is different – for a reason! 

Comedy plots – that have to end in marriage! – felt significant to Elizabethans because they are making a POSITIVE teleological argument. In short, they are about God successfully enacting their plan. There is a self-reflective quality about “Measure for Measure” – as the play is about what marriage is about, and marriages are the hallmark of comedy – that allowed me to trace this argument ON THE SURFACE.

It is interesting, though, that tragedy, in my experience, occupies a much bigger part of “Shakespeare”. And I never had a problem with understanding tragedy. I get it now that this was because I didn’t need to think HISTORICALLY to understand it. In “Shakespeare”, tragic plot must be thought of in terms of a NEGATIVE theological argument. (Which explains why, in comedies, people CANNOT die whereas in tragedies they HAVE to!) Tragedy occurs if people don’t really care about God’s will but lean on their own understanding and their own capacity to achieve happiness, which people usually do, notwithstanding their faith! And which ALWAYS goes wrong in the end. The system of believes behind it is different because tragedy at the time was only ONE side of the coin, but the outcome is virtually identical with what I perceive as my own reality. Whatever we do or don’t do will have consequences – most of them not so good in the long run. And a big part of the tragic plot consists of fighting these consequences – which we enjoy as a “good” story! - until they get overwhelming and result in death. It is just due to a different sense of time on the stage that there appears to be this absurd body count in act five. Everybody dies in the end.