Enough of "Measure for Measure" - Shakespeare (6)

The very title of Measure for Measure counsels moderation, so I've started reading the next play in the Collected Works, another dark comedy, The Merchant of Venice - particularly dark for Jews.
But I did want to mention a few more things about MfM that struck me. One of them is connected with the clown-character, Elbow.
Like many of Shakespeare's comic characters, his name is absurd:

ANGELO Elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, Elbow?

POMPEY He cannot, sir; he's out at elbow. (Act II, Scene i).

In an effort to use high language, Elbow is also given to malapropism, one of Shakespeare's favorite kinds of verbal humor.In the same scene Escalus tries to elicit a coherent story from Elbow:

ESCALUS How know you that?

ELBOW My wife, sir, whom I detest before heaven and your honour,--
ESCALUS How? thy wife?
ELBOW Ay, sir; whom, I thank heaven, is an honest woman,--
ESCALUS Dost thou detest her therefore?
ELBOW I say, sir, I will detest myself also, as well as she.
 People are not what they seem in the play. The friar is really the duke, the virtuous Angelo is really a vicious lecher, and the lecherous Claudio is really a faithful husband.
While Elbow inadvertently says the opposite of what he means, most of the other characters do it purposely upon various occasions.
Vincentio, the Duke, tells everyone he is going away, but instead he sticks around in disguise. He allows Claudio and his sister Isabella to believe he will let Claudio be executed, which he has no intention of doing, and he makes Isabella think that he has been executed. The Provost sends Angelo the head of a prisoner who conveniently happens to have died, telling him that it is Claudio's head. Angelo beats around the bush before telling Isabella she can save her brother by sleeping with him:

Admit no other way to save his life,--
As I subscribe not that, nor any other,
But in the loss of question,--that you, his sister,
Finding yourself desired of such a person,
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-building law; and that there were
No earthly mean to save him, but that either
You must lay down the treasures of your body
To this supposed, or else to let him suffer;
What would you do?
                                               Act II, Scene iv

Later, following Vincentio's instructions, Isabella arranges an assignation with Angelo, intending to send Mariana in her place. Most perfidiously of all, Angelo goes back on his promise to Isabella and orders Claudio's execution, and Lucio lies to everyone.


Information is always a major element in the unfolding of a plot: what the audience knows and what the characters know, and when they find things out. In Measure for Measure people are not what they seem. The friar is really the duke, the virtuous Angelo is really a vicious lecher, and the lecherous Claudio is really a faithful husband. Part of the resolution of the plot is the realignment of true identities: the right person marries the right person, and everyone knows who they are.
A true comedy is benign. Everyone is happy at the end, more or less.
A tragedy leaves a lot of characters dead, but many are ennobled.
Measure for Measure, a dark comedy is neither benign nor ennobling. The law cannot eliminate vice, even if it is unreasonably severe (suggesting that the law must always be inadequate to the circumstances of life). Lucio must marry a whore, and Angelo must marry the woman he has wronged. People connive and lie to each other.
That's life, I suppose.