If this ain't a Rorschach test of a play... my God. For some, it is merely another "problem play" that doesn't know what genre it is. For others, it's an elaborate and difficult allegory about God watching over us and forgiving us for our human sins. For even more, it's proof positive that for hundreds (if not thousands) of years, women have been trying to speak truth to power about the patriarchy and how it controls women with sexual (im)morality. I learned that I really didn't read it well enough the first time.
The last "comedy" in Shakespeare's oeuvre, written on the threshold of the heavyweight tragedies of Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus (oh boy it's gonna be an intense bunch of weeks ahead), it is redolent of old William wrestling with the ethics and mores of man and God. It's a morality play with a controversial ending that either cements it as a masterwork of dark satire or victim of self-censorship to avoid scandalizing the audience. I really wish this one got more play. It's sharp and efficient and contains a glut of thought-provoking quotations. I chalk this one up as a new favorite.
We begin in Vienna, where the Duke has been lax for several years about enforcing the strict laws on the books. Vienna, in Shakespeare's mind, is a licentious quagmire of brothels and alehouses. Vincentio, the Duke, speaks to Lord Escalus and some other Lordly dudes about how he plans to leave Vienna's law in the hands of Angelo, about whom he has heard such good things. Angelo comes in and the Duke confers total control over life and death situations in Vienna. Angelo humbly says he is not worthy and the Duke says "Nonsense, you'll do great, smell you later."
Lucio, "a fantastic" (which is quite a title/occupation if you ask me!), chats with a Gentleman about what knaves they are. Mistress Overdone arrives and they make jokes about contracting STDs at her bawdyhouse. They gossip about how Claudio has been arrested for fornication and getting his unwed girlfriend knocked up and he faces beheading in three days. Overdone mentions how she's had fewer customers since the new city proclamations of law were made. Pompey, the Mistress' clown/servant, confirms that Claudio is going to prison for "groping for trouts in a peculiar river." Pompey also says there's a new edict about closing all the bawdyhouses.
The Provost comes by, leading Claudio to prison with Juliet, his pregnant girlfriend, in tow. Lucio asks WTF Claudio is arrested for and Claudio says for sleeping with Juliet, even though she is "fast my wife save that we do the denunciation lack of outward order." They're not technically married yet because of a missing dowry situation. Claudio adds that this new governor of the city is putting him away for shit he did ages ago and didn't seem to matter at the time. Lucio tells him to appeal to the Duke and Claudio says the Duke is nowhere to be found. Claudio asks Lucio to go find his sister, who is about to enter a convent, to plead with the new governor for his life because:
for in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade.
Lucio agrees and goes off to find her.
The Duke goes to a friary and tells Friar Thomas that he told Angelo he went to Poland. He also explains that Vienna is in such a state of criminal overrun that "The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum." The Duke, coward as he is, admits that he let everything go to pot, and if he were to start enforcing the laws, he would look a tyrant, so in having Angelo do it, the Duke escapes slander. *insert eye roll* He asks the Friar to dress him in a friar's habit so he may go out into the town and watch the shit go down while he is disguised. He wishes to see whether or not power will change Angelo's heretofore pious adherence to the law. "Hence shall we see, If power change purpose, what our seemers be."
At a nunnery of Saint Clare, Isabella, Claudio's sister, speaks with the nun Francisca about how the rules of this nunnery should be more strict. Lucio calls from outside the walls and Francisca leaves, for the rules are as such:
You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn.
When you have vow'd, you must not speak with men
But in the presence of the prioress:
Then, if you speak, you must not show your face,
Or, if you show your face, you must not speak.
He calls again; I pray you, answer him.
Isabella speaks with Lucio, who tells her about her brother's pickle. Isabella is appalled by the news of her brother's sin and his arrest. She says that Juliet is her "cousin" aka her dear close friend. Lucio explains about how the Duke is gone and this tightass has taken over and is beheading people for sex outside of marriage all of a sudden and wants to make an example of Claudio. He says that her brother has sent him to ask her to appeal to Angelo on his behalf. Isabella is not sure this will work, but Lucio presses her:
Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
Isabella then says she is ready to leave asap, let me just tell the prioress where I'm going.
Quick sidenote: Did Isabella go into the convent because her BFF slept with her bro? Like, is Isabella so shook that she can't even express how awk this is and rather than deal with it she just ran off to the strictest nunnery she could find? Just putting that out there.
Escalus tries to convince Angelo that he's being too severe in his orders to behead Claudio for such a crime, but Angelo is steadfast in his decision that "'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall." Elbow, the Duke's "poor constable" drags in two potential knaves, Froth and Pompey, for punishment. It is soon no wonder that Vienna is so poorly policed because Elbow proceeds to do an atrocious job of getting to the point about why he brought them in the first place. Angelo gets bored and leaves the business to Escalus, who ultimately pardons the two men, warning them not to pimp around again or they'll be whipped. Escalus then continues to worry about Claudio's fate.
The Provost asks Angelo if he's truly committed to executing Claudio and Angelo tells him to do as he says and get over it already. The Provost then asks what to do with Juliet, who is soon to give birth, and Angelo says to put her somewhere that makes sense. Lucio then brings Isabella to Angelo. Lucio goads her on as she pleads for her brother's life using Christian arguments about mercy, and in the process, Angelo finds himself slowly melting at her obvious intelligence and chaste beauty. Despite this, Angelo still says that even if Claudio were his own family, the law would compel him to condemn him all the same. Against this, Isabella argues:
Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.
Isabella not only softens him, but makes his lusty blood warm, and she adds:
Because authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
That skins the vice o' the top. Go to your bosom;
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness such as is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life.
Angelo, so moved, asks her to come back tomorrow, then talks to himself about how he is suddenly tempted by her virtuous wiles:
From thee, even from thy virtue!
What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Ha!
Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I
That, lying by the violet in the sun,
Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,
Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,
Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary
And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live!
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,
That I desire to hear her speak again,
And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.
The Duke, in a friar's habit, goes to the prison to "minister" to the wretched souls there. He meets Juliet, who repents of her sins, and he comforts her by saying he will visit with Claudio.
Angelo, back at his house, soliloquizes about how he feels pride with his outward lawful manner, secretly dreams of Isabella, and he meditates on how underneath external appearances lies the common passions of all men. Isabella arrives to plead with him for Claudio's life again. They debate over man's law versus God's law until Angelo asks her if she'd be willing to sin to save her brother and she says she'd rather give her body than her soul. Angelo says that compelled sins don't count. She says she can live with the "guilt" of having her sinful brother set free. Angelo rolls his eyes because she doesn't get that he's asking if she'd give up her chastity. She replies cryptically:
As much for my poor brother as myself:
That is, were I under the terms of death,
The impression of keen whips I'ld wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death, as to a bed
That longing have been sick for, ere I'ld yield
My body up to shame.
I suppose she'd rather "die" than be shamed with being a whore, which is just the kind of shit decision women have to make to this day. Angelo says Claudio must die then. She keeps arguing with him until he admits that he loves her, and that he will free Claudio if she does what women are destined to do: create more life (by being a bedded wife, obviously). Isabella is appalled at his bargaining and she threatens to tell the world that he is a hypocrite. And here, my friends, is the moment when fucking Angelo plays the Ultimate Douchebag card.
Angelo says, in a line that would be pitch-perfect in a movie about Harvey Weinstein, "Who will believe thee, Isabel?" He cites his "austere" life and public stature. He shakes his head and says she may as well give in because he has all the power: "Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true." After he leaves, Isabella rages and says she'll tell her brother everything about her attempt to free him, but she's sure he'll agree that his life is not worth her virtue and chastity.
The Friar Duke visits Claudio in his cell and advises him on how to meditate on death by listing all the inconstant things that make up life:
Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get,
And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,
After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear's thy heavy riches but a journey,
And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,
Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,
But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.
Damn, that is some nihilistic shit for a Christian "Friar." By the end of this speech, though, Claudio feels better about his prospects, that is, until Isabella shows up. The Duke hides so he can drop some eaves. She says there's nothing to be done...except "to save a head, to cleave a heart in twain." He wonders if she means that instead of death, he will remain in jail for life. She keeps avoiding the point of her riddles, trying to get him to accept his fate until she says yes, Claudio can live in a spiritual jail of feeling guilt for letting his dear sister sacrifice her chastity for Angelo. At first, he is offended and says she shouldn't give in, but then he gets all Hamlet-like:
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
She cries "Alas, Alas!" and then he begs her to let him live, as the sin of losing her virginity will surely be washed away by the good intentions behind it. Righteously overflowing with anger, she immediately turns on him:
O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest, to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother play'd my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed:
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
DAMN, girl. I mean, I am totally on your side when it comes to the burden men put on women in these situations to be both whore and virgin, and how they leverage their power over women constantly, but Claudio is just a harmless dumbass who made a mistake right when the law of the land was being ruthlessly enforced. It is both Man's law and the Bible's law, and the city of Vienna originally put it on the books to presumably hold its citizens to a high Christian standard, but we all know that all people are horny and are always getting in each other's pants anyway.
Isabella is merely trying to uphold the law of her order and the law of the city, which is too high for nearly everyone. Everyone except her holiness, of course. When she refers to herself with the royal "we" by saying "our chastity" instead of "my chastity," she seems to be raising herself above the commonwealth. Pointing out this language, one may accuse her of a haughty level of prideful virtue, OR we may read "our chastity" as encompassing all women's chastity and she then condemns men's tendency to refuse responsibility for their sexual actions. Either way you read it, this is what makes Isabella one of the BEST characters in all of Shakespeare: she is intelligent, moral, and oh so human, perfectly flawed. Shakespeare writes her so that we simultaneously empathize with her and chastise her in our hearts. It's realistic AF.
Overhearing this family dispute, the Duke Friar comes back in to tell them that he is Angelo's confessor and he knows Angelo's mind: he made the offer to Isabella simply to test her virtue, and with her denial of his offer, she passed the pop quiz. Claudio was always going to go to death. The Duke sends the Provost away so he may speak with Isabella about a plan. He informs her that Angelo is betrothed to Mariana, but they haven't married yet because her brother Frederick lost her dowry when his ship sunk at sea, and Angelo abandoned her. Isabella feels so sorry for Mariana, that she agrees to the Duke's idea of playing a bed trick (again?!) on him so that Angelo will release Claudio and then catch him up in a legal marriage with Mariana (apparently, sex between a formally "betrothed" pair then sealed the marriage by common law).
The Duke Friar meets Elbow and Pompey and they talk about what a shame it is that the "merriest" of two usuries (fornication being the merriest, and money lending being less so), is unlawful and the other is allowed to continue in Vienna. Elbow tells the Duke that he is taking Pompey back to prison and the Duke encourages his arrest. Lucio comes over and ribs Pompey for his trouble with the law and refuses when Pompey asks if he will post bail for him. Elbow hauls him off and the Duke asks Lucio what the word on the street is re: the Duke's absence. Lucio relays some rumors, but then rants about how Angelo is such a cold fish that he was born by a mermaid and pisses ice ("But it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice"). LOL. Lucio says the Duke never would enforce such harsh measures on people because he paid off hundreds of prostitutes in his time. The Duke Friar defends the Duke and asks if Lucio would say such horrible things to the Duke's face. Lucio doesn't give two shits and says he hopes the Duke comes back ASAP because even the sparrows cannot build nests for their natural lechery under Angelo.
The Duke Friar encounters Escalus and the Provost in the process of arresting Mistress Overdone, who is ranting about how Lucio got one of her bawdy ladies pregnant and promised to marry her but has since gone back on his word like the bastard he is. They go off to find Lucio while Escalus and the Duke chat about the state of the world:
None, but that there is so great a fever on
goodness, that the dissolution of it must cure it:
novelty is only in request; and it is as dangerous
to be aged in any kind of course, as it is virtuous
to be constant in any undertaking. There is scarce
truth enough alive to make societies secure; but
security enough to make fellowships accurst: much
upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This
news is old enough, yet it is every day's news.
We didn't start the fire, it was always burning since the world's been turning, amiright?
The Duke Friar tells Escalus that he had spoken with Claudio and he's resigned to his death at this point. Escalus admits that he tried to convince Angelo to chill the fuck out with his sentencing, but to no avail. They leave the Duke alone, who rubs his hands together while he recites some merry wise poetry about what is to come:
He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.
Mariana sings a melancholy song with a boy and as soon as she sees the Duke Friar, she sends him away and apologizes for singing aloud (oh is Angelo executing people for that now as well?). He sends her away a moment so he can whisper to Isabella about how she has promised to meet Angelo in the night. Mariana returns and they tell her the plan and he reminds Mariana that sleeping with her betrothed is no sin.
In the prison, the Provost offers Pompey an alternative punishment for his bawdiness: stay on as assistant to Abhorson the executioner. Pompey promptly takes the job and Abhorson enters and scoffs at the idea, but goes along with it anyway. Claudio comes in and Provost tells him he is slated to die the next day. Claudio leaves to go wake up Barnardine ("a dissolute prisoner") and the Duke Friar comes to ask if there has been a stay of execution for Claudio, of which there is none. A messenger arrives and the Duke is sure that it is Claudio's pardon for Isabella and Mariana's work the night before. In fact, it is a letter from Angelo ordering the Provost to execute Claudio at four o'clock the next day (along with Barnardine) and by five o'clock, Claudio's head is to be delivered to him. The Duke is shocked, and asks about Barnardine and the Provost says he's been in jail a long while and is often drunk AF. The Duke tells the Provost to go ahead and kill Barnardine and substitute his head for Claudio's by shaving his hair and tying the beard, and Angelo will believe it is Claudio's because "death's a great disguiser." The Provost is sure he will hang for such a deceit, but after he promises that he is under oath to the Duke, the Duke Friar produces a letter from the Duke with his signet seal. He tells him that Angelo has received a letter telling him that the Duke is either dead or entered a monastery, but the letter for the Provost says otherwise, so the Provost agrees with the plan.
Pompey muses on how the prison might as well be Mistress Overdone's house because all her old customers are lodged within. Abhorson comes and they go to rouse Barnardine for his execution. Barnardine gets up only long enough to confidently argue that he is hung over and not fit for execution, and even after the Duke Friar comes to minister to his final prayers, Barnardine reports straight back to his bunk. The Duke stands there, shrugging, at a loss as to how to proceed. The Provost says that another prisoner--a notorious pirate, no less--just died that morning of some "cruel fever" and he happens to look a but like Claudio, so his head may be used instead. The Duke is elated about this "accident that heaven provides!" and tells the Provost to hide Claudio and Barnardine in secret cells for a few days so their plot shall work. The Provost goes to fetch the pirate's head and the Duke tells him to bring it to Angelo post-haste.
That entire scene feels like Shakespeare wrote the world's first Monty Python skit.
The Duke tells Isabella that Claudio is dead and she dies inside, wishing the pluck out Angelo's eyes. He tells her to calm down, the Duke is coming back to town the next day, and they shall confront him with Angelo's evil acts and gain justice. He tells her to bring a letter to Friar Peter about meeting at Mariana's house that night. Lucio enters and says he is sorry about what's happened to Claudio. Isabella leaves and Lucio makes some saucy comments about the Duke.
Angelo and Escalus talk about how all the Duke's letters contradict each other, and that must mean the Duke has gone mad. They wonder why the Duke has ordered them to meet him at the gates of the city, where people are allowed to bring their complaints. Escalus leaves and Angelo frets about his deflowering deed the night before and how he only killed Claudio because he feared he would come after him for sleeping with Isabella.
The Duke meets with Friar Peter outside the city and asks him to call forth some Lords.
Friar Peter finds Isabella and Mariana and tells them to go to the gates because the Duke is coming.
Everyone and their brother shows up for the final long scene that is Act V. The Duke happily greets Angelo et. al. and sings their praises for taking such good care of Vienna in his absence, but then Friar Peter prompts Isabella to speak out. Angelo goes pale and immediately tells the Duke not to listen to this wild woman whose wits are not about her. Isabella yells:
Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak:
That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange?
That Angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange?
That Angelo is an adulterous thief,
An hypocrite, a virgin-violator;
Is it not strange and strange?
The Duke agrees that this is "ten time strange" but then dismisses her, and yet she persists, calling Angelo out on his shit regarding her brother and the deal Angelo tried to strike with her to free him. The Duke pretends that he thinks she is lying, because Angelo would have been more merciful than she says, and he tries to send her to jail for demeaning Angelo with such slander.
Lucio and Friar Peter both say a "Friar Ludowick" has been consulting with her and the Duke demands they find this friar. Friar Peter says Ludowick is sick, so he will speak for him. They call in a veiled Mariana as witness. She riddles with the Duke a bit, then says she can prove that Angelo did not fornicate with Isabella because he was sleeping with her. Angelo is totally vexed, and Mariana reveals herself and Angelo admits he knows her, but broke off their engagement for dowry issues and that he heard she was a "punk" aka a total slut. The Duke still sides with Angelo and insists they find this Friar Ludowick to get to the bottom of the matter. The Duke then leaves, telling Escalus to deal with the problem.
Escalus calls Isabella back, and the Duke Friar enters, disguised. Lucio points him out as the troublemaker who has been pushing these women into scandalizing Angelo. The Duke Friar says he is outside the law in Vienna:
Be not so hot; the duke
Dare no more stretch this finger of mine than he
Dare rack his own: his subject am I not,
Nor here provincial. My business in this state
Made me a looker on here in Vienna,
Where I have seen corruption boil and bubble
Till it o'er-run the stew; laws for all faults,
But faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
As much in mock as mark.
Lucio testifies that the Friar slandered the Duke as well, but the Duke Friar says Lucio badmouthed the Duke in his presence. When the Duke Friar says "I love the Duke as I love myself," Angelo accuses him of hypocrisy. The Provost comes to take the Duke Friar away and Lucio yanks off the Duke Friar's hood, revealing him to be *GASP* the DUKE. Holy shitballs. The Duke pardons Escalus for what he's said and asks Angelo what he has to say for himself. Angelo is so ashamed that he begs to be executed. The Duke "sentences" him to be married properly to Mariana. The Duke then turns to Isabella and asks her to forgive Angelo's sin for Mariana's sake, but because he wronged Claudio, he deserves to die:
'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!'
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;
Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE.
Then, Angelo, thy fault's thus manifested;
Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage.
We do condemn thee to the very block
Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste.
Away with him!
Mariana protests, but the Duke says she could do better. Mariana begs Isabella to let Angelo live (God only knows why she still loves this jerkface), and with all her largesse of forgiveness, Isabella begs Angelo not be executed:
Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd,
As if my brother lived: I partly think
A due sincerity govern'd his deeds,
Till he did look on me: since it is so,
Let him not die. My brother had but justice,
In that he did the thing for which he died:
For Angelo,
His act did not o'ertake his bad intent,
And must be buried but as an intent
That perish'd by the way: thoughts are no subjects;
Intents but merely thoughts.
I can't believe she basically blamed her own hotness for Angelo's misdeeds. UGH Disappointment.
The Duke asks the Provost about the manner in which the orders came down to execute Barnardine and Claudio, and because the orders came by personal memo and not by warrant, the Provost did not follow through. The Provost brings out both men and Juliet and the Duke pardons them all. He asks Isabella for her hand in marriage. Notably, Isabella never speaks an answer (WTF she's been free to speak out all this time and then she clams up all of a sudden?), and despite the absolute absurdity of his proposal, he just keeps yapping away with Lucio about this whole debacle, saying Lucio will be sentenced to marrying whomever Lucio gets with child. Lucio hates this idea of course, but that's that. The Duke ends the play with thanks to the people who helped him behind the scenes and all the good wishes to the strange couples he has formed. Isabella still hasn't said whether or not she accepts the marriage proposal and there is no stage direction to indicate her choice either way, so she could have just as easily shrugged in a "What the hell why not?" kind of way or just stood there aghast until the Duke tried to lead her to the chapel. Who knows?
What the actual F was that, William? What a total brain fart. You wrote this perfectly intriguing and intelligent play until the end of Act V where you just seemed to give in to the comedic trope of "happy endings" and awkward marriages. This isn't Midsummer territory anymore! You're in deep now. I expected better from you.
Oh wait, you did this on purpose, you say? Tacked on this bizarro conclusion to flip the fig at traditional comedy? Well, I sure hope so, because if that's true, then this is satirical genius. I want it to be, mostly because it is so well written and digs deep into a very touchy subject that happens to be super relevant right now, but it's imperfect nonetheless. Which makes me love it even more. Jolly good show, William. Keep it up.
My favorite solution to the whole Duke proposal is what Packer mentions about a 2010 Colorado Shakespeare Festival production in which the director told the actress playing Isabella to choose her response to the Duke in the moment on stage each night. In some performances, she marries, and others, she does not. Now there's a show I'd like to see!
Final sidenote: the Provost in the 1979 BBC production I watched was played by none other than that notable Northumbrian, Alun Armstrong. His son, Joe, is an exact copy of his father at that age. Amazing. Just look at them! TWINSIES. Made me miss Joe though. My favorite Hotspur of all time. *sigh* What a dreamboat.
So, Billy boy, you have a ginormous pile of new plays for me? And you say they're all uberdramatic and bloody? Oh yes, bring it on! I have to watch six versions of Othello this week? Um, sure, yes, let's rock this Globe till we die. What the hell else do we have to do.
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