Language and Structure in Measure for Measure

RALPH BERRY Language and Structure in Measure for Measure I The structure ofMeasure for Measure is expressed through a dual location system not found elsewhere in Shakespeare. It is usual for Shakespeare to oppose geographic locations, each symbolizing and generating a complex ofvalues: thus, court and country, Egypt and Rome, Venice and Belmont. Even in plays where the dual setting scheme is less apparent, a change of milieu does hold its significances: Hamlet's abortive journey to England eVidently signals a change of mental direction. All these instances involve geographic change, 'travel' in its customary sense, for the protagonists. Measure for Measure is unique: it is set within the boundaries of a single city, Vienna,l yet presents an opposition between the underworld, whose control mechanism is prison, and the overworld. It is, schematically, an upstairs-downstairs play in which the structural alternations are vertical. All the conventionally identifiable scene settings - nunnery, grange, a public place, 'Vienna: courtroom, prison conform to this principle. And these settings present as dramaticrealities the energies of Measurefor Measure. This governing idea encompasses a complete society, a community whose values are fully realized in the dramatist's selection of material. The overworld is founded on government, restraint, morality, shame, discipline; its main representatives are the Duke, Angelo, Isabella, Escalus .The underworld exists for the free gratification of impulses controlled or suppressed elsewhere; its leading citizens are Pompey and Mistress Overdone. Between these worlds is an iron grid, the law of the land. And that barrier is in effect impassable save to men about town and officers of the law. This is no organic society, no Navarre in which Costard can exchange ruderies with a lady of the court.The leading proof of the social divide is Lucio. Shaw observed of him long ago: Lucio is'much more of a gentleman than Benedick, because he keeps his coarse sallies for coarse people. Meeting one woman, he says humbly, 'Gentle and fair: your brother kindly greets you. Not to be weary with you, he's in prison.' Meeting another, he hails her sparkIingly with 'How now? which of your hips has the more profound sciatica?' The one woman is a lay sister, the other a UTQ, Volume XLVI, Number 2 , Winter 1976/7 148 RALPH BERRY prostitute. Benedick or Mercuno would have cracked their low jokes on the lay sister, and been held up as gentlemen of rare wit and excellent discourse for it.1 Shaw is technically in error here (the 'sciatica' greeting is spoken by First Gentleman: doubtless Shaw's memory of a production betrayed him), but right in substance. Lucio makes a sharp distinction between the two worlds that he moves in, and his speech signals the change unmistakably . With his male friends, with Pompey, with the backstairs Friar, his language is prose. It is fluid, inventive, bawdy, malicious. With Isabella, and with the Duke in the final scene, his language is verse: decent, restrained, rather unctuous. 'I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted' reflects the pedestal on which the virtuous woman is placed. Simply, Lucio distinguishes between being on his best behaviour (in the overworld ) and indulging himself. The verse-prose switches of Lucio are one way of identifying the inner characteristics of Vienna; another is the role of juliet. Her only speaking scene is II.iii, and this is entirely superfluous to the general needs of the action. It appears therefore as an emblemscene , whose function is to present a speaking picture of sin and shame, the pregnant juliet. The Duke's judgmentis society's'As that the sin hath brought you to this shame' (n.iii.31), and juliet's submission is a perfect acceptance of the social imperative: 'I do repent me, as it is an evil, / And take the shame with joy' (35-6). Evil, which in this society is conceived primarily in sexual terms, is above all detectable in pregnancy. But until then it is veiled, prohibited, surmised. We grasp, then, a society in which vertical communication between its two main divisions is at all times difficult. The body politic appears imperfectly aware of the functioning of its separate parts. So much is apparent in a...