We learn that Claudio is to be beheaded for getting his fiancee pregnant from the Madam of a brothel, Mistress Overdone, who complains that her business is bad:
What with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.
Pompey, her tapster, then enters and gives her even worse news: "All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down."
But then he reassures her: "Come; fear you not: good counsellors lack no
clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade."
Pompey is confident that prostitution can outlawed but never eliminated. In Act II, Scene i, he says so to Escalus:
ESCALUS
In Act III, Scene ii, Lucio says more or less the same thing to the Duke in his disguise as a friar:
LUCIO
Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down.
I believe that this is Shakespeare's opinion, and at the end of the play we see severity applied correctly. Unlike Claudio, who fully intended to marry Julietta, Lucio has fathered a child with one of Mistress Overdone's sex workers, and he has no intention of marrying her until he is forced to do so:
DUKE VINCENTIO
What with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.
Pompey, her tapster, then enters and gives her even worse news: "All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down."
But then he reassures her: "Come; fear you not: good counsellors lack no
clients: though you change your place, you need not change your trade."
Pompey is confident that prostitution can outlawed but never eliminated. In Act II, Scene i, he says so to Escalus:
ESCALUS
How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?POMPEY
If the law would allow it, sir.ESCALUS
But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.POMPEY
Does your worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?ESCALUS
No, Pompey.POMPEY Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to't then.
In Act III, Scene ii, Lucio says more or less the same thing to the Duke in his disguise as a friar:
LUCIO
A little more lenity to lechery would do no harm in [Angelo]: something too crabbed that way, friar.DUKE VINCENTIO
It is too general a vice, and severity must cure it.LUCIO
Yes, in good sooth, the vice is of a great kindred; it is well allied: but it is impossible to extirp it quite, friar, till eating and drinking be put down.
I believe that this is Shakespeare's opinion, and at the end of the play we see severity applied correctly. Unlike Claudio, who fully intended to marry Julietta, Lucio has fathered a child with one of Mistress Overdone's sex workers, and he has no intention of marrying her until he is forced to do so:
DUKE VINCENTIO
Is any woman wrong'd by this lewd fellow,LUCIO
As I have heard him swear himself there's one
Whom he begot with child, let her appear,
And he shall marry her: the nuptial finish'd,
Let him be whipt and hang'd.
I beseech your highness, do not marry me to a whore.Four marriages are about to take place at the end of the comedy. Claudio, spared, will marry Julietta, Angelo, reprimanded, will marry the woman he jilted, Lucio will be forced to marry a woman of ill repute, whom he wronged, and Vicentio intends to marry the virtuous Isabella, whom he has also wronged by toying with her emotions and allowing her to believe her brother is dead - but this is acceptable within the conventions of Elizabethan theater.
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