Chapter 2 Urban Vulgar Culture and the Bawdy Politics
2.4 A Bawdyhouse in the Prison
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frequent indistinguishability from other kinds of buildings” (127). In fact, the group of staged houses of prostitution reflected a popular fantasy of the time: the bawdy business penetrated every corner of the city.
Shakespeare’s frequent oscillation between “high” and “low” places in the play is also one of his strategies to demonstrate the power of a popular performative
politics. The play subtly yet constantly undermines the authority of the Duke with the interruptions of bawdy characters, majorly Lucio the “fantastic” and Pompey the pimp. In what follows, I will examine how the Duke utilizes disguise as a strategy to protect his reputation and honor, and more importantly, how both of them are
undermined by Lucio and Pompey with their frequent interruptions, dangerous slanders, and vulgar conversations.
2.4 A Bawdyhouse in the Prison
The prison figures heavily in Measure for Measure. There are five scenes set in the prison, out of seventeen scenes in total. Critics in the past usually see the events at the prison as scenes in the “night,” where things are kept in the dark, while the trial at the city gate as a scene in the “light,” where things are exposed to truth. However, this dichotomous approach is limited because it fails to see how both in the prison and during the trial, the authority of the Duke is constantly interrupted and undermined by the bawdy characters, namely Lucio and Pompey. In other words, the prison and the trial should not be understood in terms of a binary opposition.
The prison is where the Duke deploys his schemes. It becomes a site of power, in which the Duke’s citizens are disciplined and manipulated by him. The Duke’s disguise is the key to achieving his schemes and realizing his power, and it has always been the focus of previous critical responses. It is in his disguise as a friar that he, as
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a Duke, is able to visit a low place like the prison without making a scene. It is also through the disguise, that he is able to revisit his people and understand their nature through normal conversations. His disguise is closely connected with his spatial transgression and his deployment of power.
In fact, the Duke’s desire to disguise himself and revisit his people is stated in the first scene of the play. He reveals his reasoning to Escalus:
I’ll privily away. I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement. (1.1.67-70; original emphasis) There are several reasons for his disguise. First of all, people would behave out of fear instead of true obedience in front of him. Disguised as a friar, he can watch his citizens secretly and see whether they truly obey him beneath their façade (which, ironically, turns out to be the opposite case). Secondly, the Duke fears “popularity”
and people’s judgment of him. According to Doty, in early modern England,
“popularity” could mean both people’s favor and people’s public discourses. It is exactly people’s public discourses that the Duke is afraid of, since he desires to build up his authority while protecting his reputation. To restore his authority and keep his reputation intact, the Duke must “[dismantle] the modes of discourse through which this public makes itself” (Doty 43). The Duke demands people’s obedience to him, but he does not want them to fear him. He wants to reinforce the law, but he does not want to be slandered by the people. Later in Act 1 Scene 3, while putting on his disguise as a friar, he reveals to Friar Thomas his scheme:
I do fear, too dreadful.
Sith ’twas my fault to give the people scope,
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’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them For what I bid them do: for we bid this be done, When evil deeds have their permissive pass,
And not the punishment. Therefore indeed, my father, I have on Angelo imposed the office;
Who may in th’ambush of my name strike home, And yet my nature never in the fight
To do in slander. (1.3.34-43)
The Duke disguises himself for the purpose of testing people’s obedience, but he scapegoats Angelo for avoiding people’s judgment of him. As Zdravko Planinc observes, Duke Vincentio, resembling Machiavelli’s Borgia, constructs Angelo as the Lucifer and himself as the Christ-figure, so that Angelo would be hated while he could be loved by people (149).
The intimate relation between urban spaces and the deployment of power reveals another important reason for Duke Vincentio’s disguise: he could gain access to the prison without making a scene. As a “prince in the prison,” he becomes the only one in the play that contacts every single character. It is in the prison that he secretly interacts with, examines, and finally manipulates each of his subjects under his disguise. He grasps “the nature of [the prisoners’] crimes” (2.3.7) through the help of Provost. He intends to discipline Pompey the pimp through ordering Elbow. He extends his surveillance by eavesdropping on his subjects Claudio and Isabella.
Through his disguise, transgression, and surveillance, the Duke attempts to regulate the ill behaviors of his subjects and transform them into the “ideal” roles—obedient citizens who dare not slander him behind his back. From the courtroom to the dark
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prison, from public trial to private plotting, the Duke transgresses the boundaries between the high and the low, the public and the private.
The prison, however, resists the Duke’s control and regulation in many ways.
On the surface, it is merely a site of state power in which the Duke deploys his schemes and manipulates his subjects. In fact, the prison stands for a site of lowlife politics in which bawdy figures continue their business, survive well, and even
undermine the authority of the Duke through slanders. Kamps and Raber suggest that
“rather than a world removed from and geographically distant from the underworld of crime, the prison was fully integrated into the community it ‘served’” (253). The prison should thus be read as part of the city’s underworld and its lowlife politics.
In the Jacobean period, the prison represented on the stage started to become specific references to actual locations.7 Howard observes that prisons featured heavily in “London plays,” and the one in Measure for Measure, which “contains sexual offenders,” was expected to be found in Bridewell (Theater of a City 72).
Besides references to actual prisons, a comic attitude to the prison was also adopted in Jacobean city comedies. As Grantley notes: “[a] comic or flippant attitude to these places is generally adopted despite, or perhaps because of, the recognized horrors of their reality” (112).
The comic attitude can also be found in Measure for Measure, in which the prison, on the surface, stands for a place of social control whereas, in fact, it becomes a comic space where the authority figure is constantly interrupted, slandered, and mocked by the lowlife characters. From Act 3 Scene 1 to Act 3 Scene 2, a shift of the focus can be found. While in Act 3 Scene 1, the Duke stands for an omnipotent authority who controls both Claudio and Isabella, setting up a perfect plan to capture
7 Specific references to actual prisons in Jacobean drama included Newgate in Jonson’s The Devil is an
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Angelo, in Act 3 Scene 2, the representative voice becomes that of the bawdy figures.
It is actually Lucio and Pompey who have the power to speak. Sandra Billington observes that “the subplot introduces us to the range of humanity, beginning in a brothel and moving to the prison, where Pompey finds himself very much at home since it is full of Mistress Overdone’s customers” (246). Pompey’s opening speech at Act 4 Scene 3 confirms her observation: “I am as well acquainted here as I was in our house of profession: one would think it were Mistress Overdone’s own house, for here be many of her old customers” (4.3.1-4). Gibbons, when commenting on the subversive potential of city comedy, also notes that
The anarchic, acquisitive society of the city is insistently depicted in terms of poverty and crime, and the extraordinary, hypocritical attitudes of authority are as insistently debunked in the plays. Pompey in Measure for Measure speaks for many city comedy characters when he reacts to the admonitions of Escalus “I thank your worship for your good counsel, but I shall follow it as the flash and fortune shall better determine.” (118)
In other words, Pompey and Lucio stand for not only the bawdy figures in the city underworld but also an “anarchic” society represented by the lowlife citizens.
The bawdy conversation between Lucio and Pompey stand for a popular politics that undermines the authority of the Duke. It shatters the divine face that the Duke puts on in his disguise as a friar. Right after the Duke has a short conversation with Pompey, Lucio comes in and addresses Pompey in a vulgar language, with several allusions to prostitution (“What, is there none of Pygmalion’s images newly made woman to be had now, for putting the hand in the pocket and extracting clutched?”).
Lucio and Pompey’s “low” language contrasts sharply with the Duke’s religious one.
While the Duke makes his complaint “still thus, and thus: still worse!” (3.2. 51), he is
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completely ignored by Lucio and Pompey. Later, Lucio even jokes about the Duke’s decision to imprison the pimp. When Lucio asks Pompey why he is imprisoned, he teases both the authority and the law.
POMPEY. For being a bawd, for being a bawd.
LUCIO. Well, then imprison him. If imprisonment be the due of a bawd, why, ’tis his right. Bawd is he doubtless, and of antiquity, too: bawd born.
Farewell, good Pompey. Commend me to the prison, Pompey; you will turn good husband now, Pompey; you will keep the house.
(3.2.63-69)
While the Duke is very serious about punishing and controlling the pimp through imprisonment, Lucio invites the audience to laugh about the decision, since he, along with the audience, knows that Pompey would stay a bawd, in prison or not. The audience would also catch the irony about Pompey turning a “good husband.” Here,
“the house” has two meanings. On the surface, it stands for “the prison” (Lever 85).
However, with the pimp “keeping the house,” he might turn the prison into a potential bawdyhouse. The two lowlife characters continue their vulgar conversation while the Duke remains on the stage. After their conversation, Lucio says “bless you, friar” to the Duke. It is from his farewell that the audience would notice the Duke has been there all the time, remaining silent. The scene is completely dominated by Lucio and Pompey.
What follows Lucio and Pompey’s conversation is Lucio’s slander on the Duke.
Terry Eagleton argues that “Lucio is an ethical naturalist whose complacent appeal to the body cynically subverts all values” (53). But the significance of Lucio’s
statement is bigger than an appeal to bodily desires. Whether seeing through the
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Duke’s disguise or not,8 Lucio constantly insults the Duke. The act undermines the authority that the Duke has established in the previous scene. Shakespeare links the two prison scenes together. Such connection could imply that the authority
constructed by the Duke could be easily replaced by a lowlife politics represented by the bawdy figures. In front of the disguised Duke, Lucio first praises the Duke as a wise person and the Duke in disguise is contended. Lucio, however, soon criticizes the Duke as a “very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow” (3.2.136). The Duke attempts to save his reputation by stating that “either this is envy in you, folly, or mistaking” (3.2.137), but his authority is already challenged by the fantastic. The Duke then expresses his fear of the “slanderous tongue,” after Lucio leaves:
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure ’scape. Back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? (3.2.179-82)
The Duke’s comment on the “slanderous tongue” shows not only his desire to “tie the slanderous tongue” but also his fear of losing control. His honor and reputation are closely tied up with people’s comments on him. Lucio’s slanders reveal the
vulnerability of the Duke because they hold the power to undermine his authority.
Another lowlife character, who is often ignored by most critics, is Barnardine.
Barnardine is the embodiment of ultimate autonomy and freedom. He ignores the law and listens to no one. His autonomy comes from his repeated refusal—he refuses to wake up, refuses to leave the prison, and refuses to be executed. In Act 4 Scene 2, Claudio tells Provost that Barnardine is “as fast lock’d up in sleep as guiltless labour.
When it lies starkly in the traveller’s bones. He will not wake” (4.2.64-65). Later in
8 N. Coghill argues that Lucio’s remark “usurp the beggary he was never born to” implies that he has
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the same scene, when the Duke comes to the prison, Provost tells the Duke that Barnardine is “careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come:
insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal” (4.2.141-43). The Duke then comments: “He wants advice” (4.2.144). The Duke intends to guide this “careless, reckless, and fearless” man through spiritual counsel and place religious order upon him. But this man listens to no one and even refuses to leave the prison. He also refuses to die. When the Duke, disguised as a friar, comes to “advise [him], comfort [him]” (4.3.50-51) at the prison, he replies, “I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain” (4.3.54-55). When the Duke again tries to persuade him, he interrupts the Duke and tells him that “If you have anything to say to me, come to my ward”
(4.3.61-62). Here, Barnardine’s voice is stronger than the Duke’s. His refusals are louder than the Duke’s advice. Not unlike Lucio and Pompey, Barnardine’s voice is not only heard but also highlighted at the prison. He gains autonomy through his constant refusal to any advice and his insistence on maintaining his current state of living.
Some critics see Barnardine as an embodiment of freedom. Though
(over)emphasizing the effect of power mechanism in his early essays, Greenblatt, in his recent book, Shakespeare’s Freedom, observes that “in a surreal scene of utopian resistance, Barnardine disrupts the logic of substitution by flatly refusing to be executed” (12). In the same chapter, he goes further by arguing that the character stands for Shakespeare’s view of human condition and the world: “Barnardine, so unnecessary and so theatrically compelling, serves as an emblem of the freedom of the artist to remake the world… an emblem of the playwright’s power to suspend or alter all ordinary social rules” (13-14). Greeblatt may go too far by claiming that Barnardine’s freedom equals Shakespeare’s view of the world. He, however, is not
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the only one who notices the freedom and autonomy that this lowlife character stands for. Eagleton also notes that
Barnadine gains a curiously enviable freedom by appropriating this future state into the present, as an image of living death… The State must defer his dying until he has been persuaded to accept it willingly; otherwise the punishment will have no point… there is no more effective resistance to power than genuinely not caring about it, since power only lives in exacting a response of obedience from its victims. (54)
Eagleton observes that Barnardine’s “enviable freedom” comes from his indifference to the state and the law. By completely ignoring (and “not caring about”) it, he stands above the state and its power mechanism, because power mechanism only works when its subjects react to it.
The prison, therefore, embodies several representations of lowlife characters.
While critics in the past often focused on “big” characters such as Duke Vincentio, Angelo or Isabella, Billington discovers that in this play, “examples of humanity include Pompey, the natural fool for whom sin is his trade; Lucio, the artificial fool who makes it his profession, and Barnardine, the completely unregenerate man insensible to any alternative” (246). She further points out that these characters, instead of being severely punished at the end of the play, receive much lighter sentences than the audience would have expected, and this liberty is “a comment on the failure of the apparent reformation in the play” (247). While the ending of the play is often interpreted by critics as a return to a (re)ordered and (re)disciplined world, the outcomes of the lowlife characters’ doings prove that a popular politics will persist regardless of the myth of reformation.
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Chapter 3
Civic Pageantry and the Return of the Whoremaster
3.1 Civic Pageantry and James I’s Management of Public Image
The final scene of Measure for Measure, in which Duke Vincentio arranges a magnificent return and holds a public trial at the city gate, has always been a critical focus besides the play’s intriguing beginning. It seems to contradict some critics’
claim that the Duke hates the crowd and thus avoids public appearances. The Duke not only does not fear public appearance but also wants to make it as grand as possible. In Act 4 Scene 3, after Provost leaves with the Duke’s order, the Duke reveals his determination to appear publicly in his soliloquy:
And that by great injunctions I am bound To enter publicly. Him I’ll desire
To meet me at the consecrated fount A league below the city. (4.3.95-98)
Later, the Duke orders Friar Peter to “give the like notice to Valencius, Rowland, and to Crassus, and bid them bring the trumpets to the gate” (4.5.7-9). The Duke’s soliloquy and orders show that he does not shun public appearance. On the other hand, he carefully arranges a grand return. The location, the city gate, is a careful choice. It is where every citizen has access to and passes by everyday. With the sound of the trumpets, people could be assembled in a short time.
The city gate becomes another topical and geographical reference in this
Shakespearean city comedy. The significance of the city gate was closely connected to civic pageantry and people’s living experience. Civic pageantry was a form of
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street performance, defined as “a succession of brief, relatively static tableaux performed along a procession-route, amidst large crowds” (Dutton 7). Being one of the spectacular civic entertainments, it was as popular as the staged plays. What made civic pageantry different from the staged plays was, however, that everyone had access to it and one needed not pay for admission. Stock and Zwierlein reveal the temporal affinity between city comedy and civic pageantry: “city comedy and civic pageantry flourished at the same time, in the last years of the sixteenth and the first decade-and-a-half of the seventeenth century” (16). Richard Dutton also notes that dramatists of the period frequently took inspiration from such street performances:
street performance, defined as “a succession of brief, relatively static tableaux performed along a procession-route, amidst large crowds” (Dutton 7). Being one of the spectacular civic entertainments, it was as popular as the staged plays. What made civic pageantry different from the staged plays was, however, that everyone had access to it and one needed not pay for admission. Stock and Zwierlein reveal the temporal affinity between city comedy and civic pageantry: “city comedy and civic pageantry flourished at the same time, in the last years of the sixteenth and the first decade-and-a-half of the seventeenth century” (16). Richard Dutton also notes that dramatists of the period frequently took inspiration from such street performances: