Chapter 1 Introduction
1.4 Chapter Organization
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1.4 Chapter Organization
Besides the introduction serving as the first chapter, the thesis is further divided into three chapters. The second chapter, “Urban Vulgar Culture and the Bawdy
Politics,” analyzes Measure for Measure and its representation of urban vulgar culture.
At the beginning of the play, Vienna is represented as a “vile body,” which both confirms and unsettles the early modern body politic, since the vile body stays “ill”
till the very end of the play. Vienna in the play is a representation of early modern London. The early modern suburban London, famous for its “criminal underworld,”
was also a “vile body” that refused to be governed and disciplined by either the court or the city fathers. The play not only stages the underworld of London before its audience but also invites them to experience how this urban vulgar culture permeates every part of the city, including the houses of prostitution in the suburbs and a
“bawdyhouse” in the prison. While the play seems to confirm Duke Vincentio’s control and regulation of the city, the bawdy figures provide us with an alternative reading of the play, revealing the survival and even the rise of the urban vulgar culture. Mistress Overdone continues her business. Pompey, who appears to be transformed into a hangman and thus be contained by the legal institution, actually turns the prison into a bawdyhouse with his vulgar language and his old customers as prisoners. Lucio’s constant slanders of the Duke turns the highly respectable and authoritative figure into a laughingstock. With these vivid characters and their bawdy language, urban vulgar culture thus becomes the alternative center of the play.
The third chapter, “Civic Pageantry and the Return of the Whoremaster,” relates Jacobean civic pageantry to the play’s intriguing final scene, in which the Duke stages a royal entry. Civic pageantry was part of London citizens’ living experience. While
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civic pageantries had long been used by monarchs to demonstrate their power, such as those by Elizabeth I, James I’s resistance to participating in his own pageantry
revealed his fear of public discourses and his careful management of reputation and honor. This careful management of public image and royal reputation is also represented in the play’s final scene. However, even during the final scene, Lucio does not stop his slanders of both the Duke and his alter ego, the friar. He not only turns the Duke into a mockable figure but also ruins the Duke’s reputation and honor, which the latter tries carefully to protect throughout the whole play. Thus, in the final scene, the audience does not witness the return of a respectable ruler, but the rise of a lascivious whoremaster.
The fourth chapter, “Mock King and the Politics of Clowning,” puts the play into its cultural, social, and historical backgrounds, theorizing a popular performative politics that is deeply connected to the lowlife figures on the stage. Measure for Measure belonged to the wave of disguised ruler plays after 1603, the year when Elizabeth I died and when James I became the king of England. This wave of drama was closely connected to the “mock king tradition,” in which the dramatists staged a mock king on the stage in order to show the proper way to rule. The thesis argues that Duke Vincentio, who resembled James I in many aspects, could possibly stand for a
“mock king,” too. This mock king tradition is best exemplified by the clown in Measure for Measure, Lucio, who invites the audience to laugh at the Duke and challenges his authority established in earlier scenes. The counter power of the clown and the laugh of the audience subvert a normative reading of the play. Lucio
eventually stands for the general lowlife public on the stage, forming a community with the audience through bawdy jokes and unruly laughter. It is exactly this power
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of popular mirth that turns the play from an endorsement of the ruler’s authority to a celebration of the lowlife citizens.
The fifth chapter is the conclusion. The chapter reveals how this current thesis can serve as the starting point of a new studies—Shakespeare’s city comedy. The thesis is actually the beginning, not the end, of a continuing research project focusing on Shakespeare’s city comedies and the politics of urban cultures.
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Chapter 2
Urban Vulgar Culture and the Bawdy Politics
2.1 City of the Underworld
What Measure for Measure reflects is a city of the underworld. This urban underworld is filled with taverns, hot-houses, brothels, and of course, public playhouses. It is also where infamous urban characters, including rascals, pimps, bawds, prostitutes, and whoremasters, survive and even thrive. Interestingly, this city of the underworld is not unlike the place where Shakespeare and his audience were living. Shakespeare staged this underworld through affluent urban references and topical jokes. His audience recognized these topical references and the world that they were living in. As Ivo Kamps and Karen Raber observe, “although Measure for Measure is set in Vienna, its original audiences would have recognized not a foreign world of crime, prostitution, and punishment, but their own local surroundings” (251).
Eventually, Shakespeare and his audience built up a signifying process together.
There were multiple definitions of early modern London. A distinction must be made between London and the “city” of London. The city of London in the period originally signified a limited space within the old city walls governed by the city authorities. The boundary of the “city” and the jurisdiction of the city fathers
expanded through time, however. Janette Dillon explores the changing history of the City of London:
The most restricted of these is the use of the term to refer to the area within the old city walls, which still had powerful symbolic force in the way the inhabitant or visitor experienced the space of London. Since the early
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thirteenth century, however, the area governed by the city of London authorities had extended beyond the walls to what were known as the ‘bars’
(marked by posts or gates on the main roads). Other areas had been added since then: the city gained possession of the borough of Southwark, for example, in 1550, and further significant changes were part of the city’s new charter of 1608. (9)
Dillon notes that the jurisdiction of city authorities had been expanding, from within the old city walls to the “bars,” from the “bars” to the borough of Southwark.
However, the suburbs, in which all the infamous popular entertainments thrived, were still beyond the city jurisdiction. The suburbs not only stood outside of the
jurisdiction but were also “fast expanding and encroaching on the fields and villages that surrounded the city” (Dillon 9).
Beyond the jurisdiction of the City of London, city fathers still attempted to close down theatres, “pluck down” brothel houses, and impose legal regulations upon the suburbs since they deemed the place not only sinful and morally degenerate but also dangerous and, even worse, riotous. As Sharpe points out, an “unlawful
assembly of twelve or more persons to continue riotously for more than an hour” (71) would be considered a riot, which was a felony during the period. In such a place like the city’s suburbs, an “unlawful assembly of twelve or more persons” could be easily found in a tavern, a brothel, or, a public playhouse. Moreover, people who crowded this space were usually those of the lower types. There were “excessive numbers of idle, indigent, dissolute and dangerous persons, and the pestering of many of them in small and strait room” (Larkin & Hughes 47). This was why city authorities
attempted to close down public theatres and pluck down brothels for several times and deemed them as places of disorder, chaos, and potential riots. The closing down of
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theatres and brothels should be understood as more than an attempt to stop the spread of plagues. It was a form of political control and “an attempt to regulate not the vice, nor…the spread of venereal disease, but the criminal underworld” (Dollimore,
“Transgression and Surveillance” 76).
Despite the city authorities’ attempt to regulate and control the suburban area, it continued to expand and flourish during both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean periods. By the end of the sixteenth century, London was already the center of numerous commercial transactions and foreign travellers, including the Dutch and French protestants who “found religious asylum in the city” (Engel 42). William E.
Engel observes the urban growth of early modern London:
By the time Hamlet and Twelfth Night were in repertoire, London had become one of the most populous urban centres in Europe… by the end of Elizabeth’s reign there was extensive development outside the walls: greater London had about 50,000 people at the beginning of the sixteenth century and 200,000 by the end. (41)
The growth of population contributed to popular entertainments in the suburban area, a less regulated space for job seekers, low players, and infamous characters. As Engel further notes, the increase of people resulted in “a need for more taverns, shops, and theatres, and led to expanded commercial networks of all kinds” (42). Andrew Gurr also points out that “[a]mphitheatres, baiting-houses, prize-fights and whorehouses were always within reach for the great majority of the working population as well as the wealthy” (12). These popular entertainments built up a city underworld for people of all classes, though mostly of the lower kinds. This was probably why John Stow revealed an ambivalent attitude towards London in his A Survey of London, published in 1598. Stow’s attitude was contradictory, embodying both a “conservative response
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to the erosion of late medieval traditions of hospitality” and a “progressive celebration of new socio-economic mobility and metropolitan growth” of the city (Smith, Strier &
Bevington 3).
Increasing population and popular entertainments made the city’s suburban area a democratizing space in which lowlife characters, such as Falstaff in Henry IV, and Pompey, Mistress Overdone, and Lucio in Measure for Measure, would survive well.
It was exactly the lively popular entertainments and the lowlife city characters that helped shape Shakespeare’s imaginative world. David L. Smith, Richard Strier, and David Bevington argue that Shakespeare “had an awareness of the ‘resilience’ of London” (4). Stephen Longstaff also suggests that “the unique social conditions of London, a city always in flux and at the forefront of social change, greatly helped the development of the unique theatrical conditions of Shakespeare’s day” (58). The lowlife “city characters” represented in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Falstaff, Mistress Overdone, Lucio, and Pompey, actually reflected a broader picture of the city underworld in the early modern London.
The “underworld” of London became a symbol of moral degeneration in several city writings. The writing of George Whetstone (1544-1587) vividly captured the
“criminal” underworld of London, in which “[a]llies, gardens and other obscure corners out of the common walks of the Magistrate” were filled with “masterless men, needy shifters, thieves, cutpurses, unthrifty servants, both serving men and prentices”
(Izard 140). In Donald Lupton’s description of London in 1632, London, referred to as a “she,” stood for a center of decay, sins, and uncontrollable desire.
She is grown so great that I am almost afraid to meddle with her. She’s certainly a great world, there are so many little worlds in her. She is the great beehive of Christendom, I am sure of England. She swarms four times a year,
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with people of all ages, natures, sexes, callings; decay of trade, the pestilence, and a long vacation are three scarecrows to her… she seems to be a glutton, for she desires always to be full… she may be said to be always with child, for she grows greater every day than other. She is the countryman’s labyrinth;
he can find many things in it, but many times loseth himself. (Lupton B-B2v) Lupton’s writing on London was anti-city. By portraying London as a growing glutton, he showed not only his condemnation of such a sinful place but also his fear of such a fast-expanding underworld. The suburban London was all that was
associated with earthly sins, unfulfilled desires, and people of the lower kinds.
Lupton also attempted to build up a common dichotomy between the country
(represented as the chaste and the innocent) and the city (represented as the sinful and the sophisticated), warning the countrymen not to “lose themselves” in such a
“beehive” and a “labyrinth.”
The suburban area of London was exactly like a beehive, which attracted disreputable men and lowlife characters. As G. Blakemore Evans observes, the area
“attracted, like bees to the honey-pot, large numbers of undesirables (rogues,
vagabonds, prostitutes, pickpockets, ‘cony-catchers’—confidence men (and women) of all shades and varieties) who made their living by preying on an all-too-gullible public” (204). It is worth noticing that in Evans’s description, the “undesirable men”
and the public places are connected. A brothel, a bath-house (or a “hot house” in early modern terms), a tavern, or even a public playhouse would not have been regarded as a sinful place if they did not attract many masterless men and infamous characters. Gamini Salgado also reveals that “most theatre owners…were brothels owners too” (58). What made public playhouses and brothels deeply connected was that they did share the same clientele. Taverns, which Falstaff might have visited
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frequently with Hal before the young prince becomes Henry V, were not any better.
Concerning the criminal underworld of Elizabethan and Jacobean London, Evans finally concludes that,
The underworld of Elizabethan-Jacobean England was dangerously well populated, both in the cities (particularly London) and in the countryside.
The harsh economic conditions under which some 90 percent of the
population subsisted were a natural breeding-ground for criminal elements, and, if we may accept the numerous contemporary accounts of their
felonious activities, they were highly successful in pillaging the public despite the various acts passed by Parliament to control such ‘rogues and vagabonds.’ (226)
Clearly, despite the attempt to regulate and control the space, the suburban area and the masterless men continued to survive and even flourish.
It was this underworld that Shakespeare captured in Measure for Measure. In fact, Shakespeare was not the first playwright to stage such an underworld. While both Giraldi Cinthio’s novella Hecatommithi (1565) and George Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra (1578) served as Shakespeare’s source materials for Measure for Measure, it was Whetstone who included an “additional social stratum” and added
“an active and vibrant world of minor officials and common people” (Thomas 71) to Cinthio’s tale.2 Scholars have found that Promos and Cassandra might have been the main source for Shakespeare, for it contains “scenes of low life that correspond to similar scenes in Measure for Measure” (Tillyard, Shakespeare’s Problem Plays 130).
However, what makes Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure different from
Whetstone’s dramatization of the underworld was Shakespeare’s ambivalent and even
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sympathetic attitude towards the low life. As Thomas suggests, in Measure for Measure, “we don’t see a poor populace ground down by corrupt officials, but rather an underworld of rampant sexuality and prostitution which appears impervious to the most biting laws” (72). Shakespeare also incorporated topical allusions and
contemporary politics into his play in order to attract his audience, whose “pervasive fascination with all these types of criminals” and “hunger for inside information, for
‘true to life’ depictions, for juicy stories” (Kamps & Raber 257) would have drawn them to such a dramatic representation of the urban criminal underworld. It is this inclusion of topical news that further makes Measure for Measure distinct from its source materials.
The representation of the city’s underworld could also be seen as part of the dramatic traditions of Jacobean city comedies. Evans notes that “[d]ramatists found the underworld of town and country a useful source for characters and sometimes for plot situations…city comedy was a natural habitat for cheats and sharpers of all shades” (228). A city comedy not only captured the world of the suburban area but also was staged within the space itself. It was a representation of the city’s
underworld put in that particular underworld itself. It was more than a reflection of the underworld, since the representation and the world were so connected that one could not tell which reflected which anymore. A city comedy could also be seen as a
“shaping force” of the underworld since it was indeed part of the public
entertainments in the suburban area, and it was part of the popular culture that was seen as dangerous, immoral, and even sinful. Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, in which the city’s underworld in 1604 was put on the stage, was one of the best
examples.
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2.2 The City as a Vile Body
Measure for Measure begins with a discussion between Duke Vincentio and Escalus, the ancient Lord. The Duke begins the play by saying that, in terms of
“government the properties” (1.1.3),3 Escalus knows more about the city and its government than he does. “Government” is one of the first words that appears in Measure for Measure. It becomes the key concept in the understanding of the play.
The Duke then tells Escalus that he relies on his knowledge of the city’s popular and social customs in order to govern it well,
The nature of our people,
Our city’s institutions, and the terms For common justice, y’are as pregnant in As art and practice hath enriched any That we remember. (1.1.9-13)
The Duke sees the city as an organism, which consists of the citizens, the social and political customs, and the terms of court. The organism, however, is presently in an ill condition due to “too much liberty” (1.2.118), as Claudio later admits.
Vienna is thus represented as a “vile body.” As the play goes on, it is revealed that the city as an organism goes rotten because moral degeneracy filled every layer of the society. Shakespeare employs illness and disease in the play as a series of metaphors for social illnesses. Representatives of each type of social illness from different social classes could be easily found in this play. The brothel houses run by Mistress Overdone is the representative of the lower kind of social disease. Lucio, upon seeing Overdone coming, exclaims: “Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchases as many diseases under her roof” (1.2.41-43). The term
3 J.W. Lever, ed. Measure for Measure (London: Methuen, 1966). All subsequent references are noted
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“disease” has a twofold meaning. First, it means, literally, the sexually transmitted diseases that the brothel helps to spread. Secondly, it implies that the brothel house is the center for urban rascals, thus the source of chaos and disorder. The sexually transmitted diseases make the citizens wither away. Overindulgence in sexuality makes the society as a whole corrupt. The brothel stands for the root of social illness, the place that makes the organism of the city rot away. This is why “the houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down” (1.2.95-96).
Then comes Claudio, convicted of the sin of lust: “Our natures do pursue / Like rats that ravin down heir proper bane / A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die”
Then comes Claudio, convicted of the sin of lust: “Our natures do pursue / Like rats that ravin down heir proper bane / A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die”