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Mind the Gap:

Mind the Gap: . 6 Memos for Measure for Measure. 1. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN SOURCE TEXTS AND PLAY TEXT, EXPECTATION AND EXECUTION. Main sources: The corrupt governor / indecent proposal story as exemplum / folktale

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Mind the Gap:

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  1. Mind the Gap: 6 Memos for Measure for Measure

  2. 1. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN SOURCE TEXTS AND PLAY TEXT, EXPECTATION AND EXECUTION Main sources: The corrupt governor / indecent proposal story as exemplum / folktale Cinthio Hecatommithi (1565): Decade 8, Novella 5 (another novella will form primary source for Othello) George Whetstone’s 2-part play Promos and Cassandra (1578) – Promos and Cassandra = Angelo and Isabella

  3. In all sources: • Isabella equivalent is not a nun • Isabella equivalent sleeps with Angelo equivalent • ‘Isabella’ marries ‘Angelo’ • In some sources: Angelo is then executed; in other sources, Angelo is reprieved and he and Isabella live happily ever after. •  UNIQUE TO SHAKESPEARE: • CENTRALITY OF DUKE: DUKE IN DISGUISE (DISGUISED RULER VOGUE) • ISABELLA’S VOCATION • USE OF THE BED-TRICK (see above)

  4. 2. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE; MIND AND BODY No, Holy Father, throw away that thought; Believe not that the dribbling dart of love Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee To give me secret harbour hath a purpose More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends Of burning youth. (1.3.1-6)

  5. 3. MIND THE LINGUISTIC GAP • MO REASONS FOR THIS ACTION • AT OUR MORE LEISURE SHALL I RENDER YOU; • ONLY THIS ONE: LORD ANGELO IS PRECISE, • STANDS AT A GUARD WITH ENVY, SCARCE CONFESSES • THAT HIS BLOOD FLOWS, OR THAT HIS APPETITE • IS MORE TO BREAD THAN STONE. HENCE SHALL WE SEE • IF POWER CHANGE PURPOSE, WHAT OUR SEEMERS BE. • (1.3.48-54)

  6. 3. Mind the Linguistic Gaphttp://www.oed.com/Lord Angelo is precise…

  7. http://leme.library.utoronto.ca/index.cfm

  8. http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/concordance/

  9. EEBO: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search

  10. Diseases of the Soul: A Discourse Divine, Moral and Physicall (1613) Thomas Adams Disease no. 12: The Rotten Fever of Hypocrisy … which is nothing els, but vice in Vertues apparell… He lookes squintey'd, ayming at two things at once, the satisfying his owne lusts, and that the world may not be aware of it. hauing much angell without, more diuel within a painted sepulcher, that conceales much rottennesse: a crude Gloe-worme shining in the darke: a stinking dunghill couer'd ouer with snow: His words are precise, his deeds concise; Hee forceth formall precisenesse, like a Porter to hold the dore, whiles diuels dance within. He giues God nothing but shew, as if he would pay him his reckoning with chalke; which encreaseth the debt […] Hee is false in his friendship, hartlesse in his zeale, proud in his humilitie. He railes against enterludes, yet is himselfe neuer off the stage, and condemnes a maske, when his whole life is nothing els.

  11. 4. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN THE FIRST PERFORMANCES OF THE PLAY AND ITS FIRST APPEARANCE IN PRINT Measure written in 1603/4 First recorded performance was in front of King James in the banqueting hall at Whitehall on Boxing Day, 1604 But does not come into print until its publication in 1623 in the First Folio. What happens to text/s between 1603/4 and 1623?

  12. Middleton and Measure The Oxford Middleton publishes a ‘GENETIC TEXT’ – which aims to show the play’s development from one state to another.  First 79 lines of 1.2: Middleton’s stylistic fingerprint is all over this passage. Topical references place the additions around 1621. Poverty, pirates Lucio’s presence is in 2.2 is wholly or mostly attributed to Middleton.  Bawd played by boy actor becomes ‘Mistress Overdone’ – her first appearance in 1.2, like Lucio’s, is in part of play Middleton is thought to have added. Pompey’s speech in 4.3 cataloguing the inhabitants of the crowded prison also suspected addition.

  13. Middleton and Measure Why Vienna? ‘There are reasons to suppose that Shakespeare set the play in Italian Ferrara, and that Middleton altered the setting specifically in order to establish the Thirty Years’ War as a backdrop.’ Vienna as seat of Catholic emperor Ferdinand II and as a city at war. Partly explains the Italian names of the original. ‘Even before adaptation, Measure would have been amongst the most Middletonian of Shakespeare’s plays.’ With the exception of TheComedy of Errors, Measure is Shakespeare’s only strictly urban comedy. Middleton is the only person known to have adapted a Shakespeare play for the professional theatre before the Restoration; he was entrusted to do so by Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men.

  14. 5. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT IS AND IS NOT REPRESENTED ON STAGE • When I would pray and think, I think and pray • To several subjects. Heaven hath my empty words, • Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, • Anchors on Isabel: God Heaven in my mouth, • As if I did but chew upon his name • And in my heart the strong and swelling evil • Of my conception. • [1606: Act to Restrain Abuses of Players(1606), a parliamentary bill introducing a fine of £10 for each occasion upon which an actor ‘jestingly or profanely’ spoke the name of God or Jesus Christ.]

  15. ISABEL’S SILENCE AND KEMBLE’S ENDING (1794 – ) DUKE: FOR THEE, SWEET SAINT, - IF, FOR A BROTHER SAVED • FROM THAT MOST HOLY SHRINE THOU WERT DEVOTE TO • THOU DEIGN TO SPARE SOME PORTION OF THY LOVE, • THY DUKE, THY FRIAR, TEMPTS THEE FROM THY VOW • [ISABEL IS FALLING TO HER KNEES, THE DUKE PREVENTS HER KISSES HER HAND, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS SPEECH] • IN ITS RIGHT ORB LET THY TRUE SPIRIT SHINE • BLESSING BOTH PRINCE AND PEOPLE – THUS WE’LL REIGN • RICH IN POSSESSION OF THEIR HEARTS, AND WARNED • BY THE ABUSE OF DELEGATED TRUST • ENGRAVE THIS ROYAL MAXIM ON THE MIND • TO RULE OURSELVES BEFORE WE RULE MANKIND. • (FLOURISH OF DRUMS AND TRUMPETS)

  16. ISABEL’S SILENCE AND PETER BROOK’S ACT V (1950) MARIANA: O ISABEL, WILL YOU NOT LEND A KNEE? • DUKE: HE DIES FOR CLAUDIO’S DEATH. • ISABELLA (kneeling) MOST BOUNTEOUS SIR, • LOOK, IF IT PLEASE YOU, ON THIS MAN CONDEMNED • AS IF MY BROTHER LIVED. • PETER BROOK: ‘THIS WAS A SILENCE IN WHICH ALL THE INVISIBLE ELEMENTS OF THE EVENING CAME TOGETHER, A SILENCE IN WHICH THE ABSTRACT NOTION OF MERCY BECAME CONCRETE FOR THAT MOMENT TO THOSE PRESENT.’

  17. 6. MIND THE GAP BETWEEN EACH HALF OF THE PLAY‘In IV.1 we are transported to the world of romance itself – to the moated grange, to Mariana and her music, to the lyrical description of Angelo’s garden, and to kindly intrigue – in short, to a world as far removed from the corrupt atmosphere of Vienna as Portia’s enchanted Belmont is from the commercial turmoil of Venice.’(J.M. Nosworthy, intro to Arden edition 1969)‘The most famous work of art inspired by Middleton is undoubtedly Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘Mariana’ (1870), based on a Middleton passage in Measure for Measure.’ (Gary Taylor, intro to Complete Thomas Middleton)

  18. Puritan and anti-theatricalist writer Philip Stubbes on the garden-alleys and their pleasure houses: ‘Some of these places are little better than the stews and brothel houses were in times past […] In the fields and suburbs of the cities they have gardens, either paled or walled around very high, with their arbours and bowers fit for the purpose […] And for that their gardens are locked, some of them have three or four keys apiece, whereof one they keep for themselves, the other their paramours have to go in before them.’ ‘These resorts of pleasure were used by the light-heeled or bored citizen’s wife as well as by the superior type of courtesan’ (Salgadi, The Elizabethan Underworld, p.59)

  19. 6 MEMOS MIND THE GAP between: 1) source texts and play texts 2) theory and practice 3) what words might have signified then and what they mean now 4) first performance and first printing 5) what is and is not represented/representable on stage 6) each half of the play

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