Absence of Absolutism in Measure for Measure

     Richard H. Brodhead, in his study of "Regionalism and the Upper Class" in nineteenth-century American literature, is interested in making some specific claims about literary production in that time period. But in order to do so, he also makes some broader programmatic statements on the relationship between literature and the broader world of culture. "Writing's historical publics," he says, "have always been socially localized. Such publics are always established on some principle of inclusion from among those who have leisure to read and attach value to this entertainment. But the groups that have come together into literary audiences have never been grouped by their reading tastes alone: their reading interests are always bound together with the set of extraliterary interests that unite them as a group" (161-2). And while he goes on to describe ways in which regionalist fiction catered to their "extraliterary interests," he is also careful to concede that "The social organization of literature's public life never determines literary creation" (167).

     Shakespeare scholarship has also studied the extraliterary interests of the emerging market for plays, and how they might have impinged on early modern playwrights. The "reforms" implemented by the newly Protestant Church of England, which did away with aspects of religious praxis deemed overly theatrical, it has often been surmised, created a need for public spectacle filled by dramatists such as Shakespeare. Within English drama, plays produced to be performed by adult actors in an outdoor theater are often seen as appealing to a market with more bourgeois concerns, while those produced for indoor theaters within the City of London itself are seen as catering to a high-brow, aristocratic audience. Still more specifically, plays might be produced with a single performance for a royal audience in mind. It is when claims about the social contexts of literary production become this specific that we may be most tempted to ascribe overwhelming explanatory value to them, and for this reason it is here that Brodhead's caveat should be borne most clearly in mind.

     Shakespeare's Measure for Measure was performed before King James I not long after his accession to the throne of England, in December 1604. While the play shares James' interest in the basis and limits of legal authority, and may have appealed to him on that head, it also offers interpreters a puzzling ambiguity in its treatment of these issues. It would seem that, now if ever, Shakespeare had an opportunity to curry favor with the new king (Ben Jonson's later career illustrates how valuable royal patronage could be in James' court) by writing a play which celebrated notions of sovereignty and the divine right to rule cherished by James, but this is precisely what his play does not do.

     Puritans were often represented on the early modern stage as hypocrites; but Puritan hypocrisy becomes deeply troubling when it is embodied in a ruler because it calls into question the ruler's right to govern. James I, in his 1598 treatise The True Law of Free Monarchies, had taken the position that "the king is above the law, as both the author and giver of strength thereto, [...]. And therefore general laws made publicly in parliament may, upon known respects to the king, by his authority be mitigated and suspended upon causes only known to him" (153). Yet, again and again, the characters in Measure for Measure insist that the ruler be governed by the laws of the land in order for his rule to be legitimate.

     When Escalus questions the legitimacy of passing a death sentence on Claudio by questioning whether, under different circumstances, "you had not sometime in your life / Erred in this point which you now censure him" (2.1.14-5), Angelo answers:

     'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,

     Another thing to fall. [...]

                   [...]

     You may not so extenuate his offense

     For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,

     When I that censure him do so offend,

     Let mine own judgment pattern out my death

     And nothing come in partial" (2.1.17-8, 27-31).

Like that of Escalus, Isabella's arguments against her brother's harsh sentence rely on the potential for hypocrisy inherent in the situation. And again, Angelo seems to accept the basic premise that the ruler must be ruled by the laws he enforces: "Thieves for their robbery have authority / When judges steal themselves" (2.2.183-4).

     Shakespeare certainly saw the dramatic value in forcing Angelo to rely upon rhetoric throughout the play that will damn him in the end. But in the context of Measure for Measure's early performance history as a comedy presented before the well-known absolute monarchist James I, the ubiquity of such rhetoric is striking. While much about Measure for Measure suggests Shakespeare did have his royal audience in mind, the play also suggests that the socio-political interests of its audience did not dictate the final form of the work.

Works Cited

James I of England. "From The True Law of Free Monarchies." Measure for Measure: Texts and Contexts. By William Shakespeare. Ed. Ivo Kamps and Karen Raber. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 149-54. Print.