Introduction: The "Stew" of Vienna

It is easy to forget that the play starts from the premise that Viennese society is being radically disrupted by a general moral decadence:

There is so great a fever on goodness that the dissolution of it must cure it. Novelty

is only in request, and, as it is, as dangerous to be ag'd 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 accurs'd. (3.2.222-

28)^[1]

There is a natural need for the "security" which lasting "fellowships" provide: even Lucio, who is one of the main culprits, relies on Claudio's "precis[ion] in promise-keeping" (1.2.74-76).^[2] However, left to themselves, many seem unable to prevent themselves from being distracted, presumably by self-love and sensual desire, from exercising the dutiful, restrained loyalty, or "truth," which is required to fulfil this need (3.2.226-28). After his arrest Claudio himself acknowledges in a moment of clarity that his problems stem from "too much liberty":

As surfeit is the father of much fast,

So every scope by the immoderate use

Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,

Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil, and when we drink we die. (1.2.128-30)

Thus, Shakespeare suggests that desires which are as natural as "eating and drinking," as Lucio and others frequently point out, may nevertheless prove to be dangerous both to oneself and others if indulged in immoderately (3.2.102-03, 3.2.174-76, 2.1.230-35, 2.2.5-6).

The old laws aimed to safeguard the "security" which families naturally require by imposing conventional restraints on sensual desire--chief among which is of course the institution of marriage--which are underwritten by legal deterrents. It should be remembered that Juliet's famous namesake, who only even goes as far as confessing her love by accident, is immediately concerned to guarantee Romeo's fidelity by marrying him.

The most concrete example of the harm which unrestrained desire may cause is venereal disease. The second gentleman has "purchas'd...diseases" amounting to "three thousand dolors a year" at Mistress Overdone's brothel, and his two interlocutors seem to be in much the same situation (1.2.5-59; see also 3.2.56-60). More broadly, events bear out the Duke's contention that sexual immorality in particular "is too general a vice, and severity must cure it" (3.2.99-100). The incident in which Elbow's pregnant wife is groped by Froth, who mistakes her for a prostitute when she is attempting to buy stewed prunes at an inn which, unbeknownst to her, turns out to be one of the many brothels in Vienna, furnishes a small but significant example of the way in which ordinary family life is being disrupted by a "corruption" that "boil[s] and bubble[s] till it o'errun the stew" (2.1.75-169, 5.1.318-19). The portrayal of Pompey, who is evidently just one of the many bawds who batten on the burgeoning sex trade in Vienna, demonstrates how self-love often mingles with immoderate sensuality to form this chaotic "stew" (1.2.95-105).

Lucio provides the most sustained illustration of a society in which "too much liberty" has degraded the "truth," or dutiful loyalty, upon which lasting attachments depend (3.2.204). Claudio twice refers to Lucio as his "friend," but, far from showing the loyal care which friendship usually entails, Lucio's efforts to protect Claudio from execution are mainly motivated by a fear that he himself "would stand under grievous imposition" if Angelo's strict regime were to go unchallenged (1.2.142, 1.2.192, 1.2.187-91). By contrast, he has nothing to gain by keeping Pompey out of prison, and so shamelessly rebuffs the pimp's repeated requests for bail, even though he is not only one of the latter's long-standing customers, but has long been considered a "friend" (3.2.40-85). His most egregiously inconstant act is to inform against Mrs. Overdone, no doubt in the hope of ingratiating himself with the new regime, even though she is generously looking after his own child, whose mother is a "punk" whom he promised to marry (3.2.198-203, 4.4.169-74, 5.1.508-523). Pompey's jokes about hanging Abhorson, who has promised to teach him his deadly "trade," and thus enable the pimp to escape "imprisonment" and "an unpitied whipping," show a similar level of insouciant ingratitude (4.2.54-59, 4.2.8-14).

The shameless Lucio is a stranger not only to the restraints which deep attachments naturally impose, but to Christian conceptions of virtue, as we may infer from his mockery of Isabella's determination to renounce the world and enter a convent (1.4.31-38, 1.4.57-61). We may infer from his slandering of the Duke and his constant interruptions in the final scene that he respects the authority of the ancien regime as little as he fears God or dishonour (3.2.116-84, 4.4.161-62, 5.1.78-87, 5.1.188-92, 5.1.214-15, 5.1.283-86, 5.1.304). The play indicates that the only force which can "secure" societies against the depredations of such men is fear of the law's "grievous imposition" (1.2.187-89). It is this nagging fear that drives Lucio to enrol Isabella to plead Claudio's cause, and subsequently to urge her insistently to do so in the most emotive manner possible (1.4.24-90, 2.2.109-32).

Sexual immorality is symptomatic of a broader decadence in Vienna, in which "liberty plucks justice by the nose; the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum" (1.3.29-31; see below). It should be remembered that Pompey is a thief as well as a pimp (3.2.15-18). Apart from theft and prostitution, the crimes and misdemeanours of those who have recently been imprisoned under Angelo's regime range from unpaid debt to assault and murder (4.3.1-19). Although Shakespeare makes this point clear for those who wish to consider its implications, he relegates it to the subplot. I would suggest that he focuses on sexual immorality in the play, partly because it seems to be a sufficiently trivial matter to be treated mercifully in the end without disturbing either his audience's natural sense of justice or the conventions of comedy--for his aim is to invite some readers and viewers to contemplate the function of the laws and the forces that obstruct that function, rather than to transform society--and partly because such immorality is more directly detrimental to the "truth" which sustains families and "fellowships" than many other apparently more egregious vices.

Christianity and the Law

The effectiveness of the arguments which the wily Duke uses to induce Angelo to abandon his life of "study and fast" in order to endeavour to control this "fever on goodness" confirms that his claim to have "fully unfolded" the "history" of his deputy's "character" is largely well-founded (1.4.57-61, 1.1.26-29). The Duke starts by arguing that Angelo's apparently self-denying regimen is in reality highly self-indulgent: "Thyself and thy belongings are not thine own so proper as to waste thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee" (1.1.29-35). This suggestion that God expects the souls that He has created to show their gratitude by making themselves useful in the world prepares the way for a covert appeal to the intense, restless desire for "honors" which the Duke recognises to be Angelo's unacknowledged ruling passion: his spirit is "finely touch'd...to fine issues;" is capable of "excellence;" and can earn "glory" for his Creator -but also, implicitly, for himself (1.1.52, 1.1.35-40). The Duke understands that his new deputy's self-regard cannot be acknowledged openly, since his piety demands that it manifests itself as humble self-denial. It is only later, once Angelo has abandoned his desire to distinguish himself by his "gravity," that he can admit to himself that both his recent entry into politics and, by implication, his former "studie[s]" have always been motivated by "pride" (2.4.7-12).

Angelo's desire to distinguish himself is easily redirected into politics because the Duke's pious arguments enable him to savour, albeit in an entirely unacknowledged manner, the prospect of winning "honors," both on earth and in heaven, which would far exceed any he might gain in the private sphere through his ascetic regimen. We may infer from the shrewd Vincentio's choice of Angelo as deputy that the latter's character is particularly well suited to the task of reviving the strict laws precisely because he combines a driving pursuit of honour with sincere piety (see 2.4.1-5). It is his faith which enables him to ignore the popular resentment which this project is bound to provoke in a way that the philosophical Duke is unable to do: Angelo genuinely wishes to win "glory" for, and implicitly from, God, even though, as he later realises, he is also entranced by the "awe" which "place" and "form" "wrench...from fools" (2.4.12-15).

Despite tending to assign supreme value to the contemplative life which Angelo has hitherto been leading, and which Isabella aspires to lead, we are reminded that the Christian faith does provide a degree of support for those who wish to enter public life by the Duke's allusions both to Christ's injunction against hiding one's light under a bushel and to the parable of the talents (1.1.29-40; see Matthew v 14, xxv 14). Indeed, Christianity even offers some teachings, drawn primarily, but by no means entirely, from the Old Testament, which enable Angelo to feel that he is serving God by playing the lofty role of moral arbiter in a new, much stricter regime, in which lawlessness of all types, but particularly sexual immorality, is no longer tolerated -although, as we shall see, these teachings go against the grain of the main body of Christian doctrine.

When in post, Angelo maintains that the primary function of the law is as a general deterrent: it is like "a scarecrow," which must occasionally move, lest "birds of prey" make it "their perch rather than their terror" (2.1.1-4). This argument, which, as we shall see, is initially endorsed by the Duke himself, demands that retribution must be a public affair: Angelo successfully causes wide-spread consternation by issuing a "proclamation" that the brothels "must be pluck'd down," while ensuring that wrongdoers like Claudio are "show[n]...to th' world" before they are led to prison (1.3.19-28, 1.2.60-119). He easily counters Escalus's pleas for clemency for Claudio, which are based on the argument that he too could easily have erred in the same way if he had had the opportunity, since he is subject to the same "affections" (2.1.8-16). Angelo tells Escalus firstly that "'tis one thing to be tempted...another thing to fall," but then adds, crucially, that even if he were himself corrupt, he could still ensure that the law fulfilled its vital purpose as a deterrent. From a political point of view, it does not matter much that the law is a fairly blunt instrument in individual terms: "What's open made to justice, that justice seizes. What knows the laws that thieves do pass on thieves" (2.1.17-26).^[3]

Isabella succeeds in undermining Angelo's resolution where Escalus fails, purely, it seems, because she gives the latter's argument an explicitly Christian twist. She demonstrates eloquently that Angelo's stern efforts to revive the old laws are ultimately impossible to reconcile with the humility which Christian doctrine demands. "Proud man, dress'd in a little brief authority," who callously condemns others, "like an angry ape, play[ing]...fantastic tricks before high heaven," has a nature which is as "glassy," that is, brittle or unreliable, as those whom he condemns: "authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, that skins the vice o' th' top" (2.2.110-24, 2.2.134-39). Moreover, it is iniquitous for "souls that...were forfeit once" through original sin to judge others more harshly than they are themselves judged by a merciful Redeemer: "How would you be if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are?" (2.2.73-79). Isabella's arguments reflect the Christian tendency to internalise both virtue and vice: however virtuous his actual conduct might be, Angelo's judgement of Claudio is invalidated by original sin, or a "natural guiltiness," as he would doubtless discover if he examined his own "heart" carefully (2.2.136-41). According to the dominant strand of Christian doctrine, the primary vice is a proud refusal to admit to one's own innate "guiltiness," like "the unwedgeable and gnarled oak," while the primary virtue is a humble reliance on Christ's mercy (2.2.116).

At first, as befits a man who has "studied" the "state" carefully for many years, Angelo's response to Isabella is, if anything, even more sturdy and convincing than his refutation of Escalus's arguments (2.4.7-8). His defence of the political function of the old laws is both earnest and cogent. The law, he avers, is like a "prophet" who guards against "future evils" which are currently "in progress to be hatch'd and born": there are many who "had not dar'd to do...evil if the first that did th' edict infringe had answer'd for his deed" (2.2.91-99). Paradoxically, by enforcing the old laws with the utmost severity, Angelo is in fact showing a compassion that extends far beyond individual cases: "for then I pity those I do not know, which a dismiss'd offense would after gall" (2.2.100-02).^[4] I would argue that this defence of the deterrent function of the law is fully endorsed by Shakespeare.

The wordplay in Angelo's aside, "She speaks, and 'tis such sense that my sense breeds with it," indicates that it is Isabella's words rather than her person which catalyse and emancipate his sensual desire (2.2.141-42). Reviewing with grim sardonicism her routine farewells, "Heaven keep your honor safe," and "'Save your honor!" he seems for a moment to recognise that the threat is "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?" (2.2.147-63). He could indeed be said to "sin in loving virtue," since he is in the process of being corrupted, not primarily by sensual desire, or "power," as the Duke anticipates, but precisely by Isabella's arguments for Christian humility (2.2.182, 1.3.54). His attraction to Isabella, whom he now sees as a "saint..." embodying all the Christian virtues, is inseparable from his underlying sense that this role clashes with the humble compassion which his faith has taught him to celebrate above all other qualities (2.2.178-80). In this way Shakespeare hints, in an understandably indirect way, that the doctrines which lie at the very centre of the Christian faith may actively undermine just political authority, and therefore the rule of law.

Isabella's Christian arguments apparently convince Angelo that his nature is too sinful to be able to win "glory" for and from God. They also catalyse what appears to be a pre-existing, repressed intuition on Angelo's part that worldly "place" and "form" are insubstantial rewards for the arduous duties of political authority: he now sees that, at best, they merely "wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to [a] false seeming" (2.4.12-15). The conceit which he uses to explore his overpowering excitement at Isabella's approach provides a further hint that his attraction to her is inseparable from his impatience with his political role, since it implies that even in the unlikely event that the populace should show him "obsequious fondness" and "untaught love," he would find their advances suffocating rather than gratifying, since he would now see them merely as feeding a futile vanity (2.4.26-30). Angelo's sublimated pride has hitherto allowed him to rule justly, but he is left with no substantial motive to do so, once the doctrines which allowed him to rationalise this vanity by seeing himself as performing the will of a just God have been undermined by Isabella's arguments. Such a motive may exist, since one might imagine a "fond father" who could steel himself to discipline those in his care purely through love, but Angelo is clearly not moved deeply by attachments, whether patriotic or personal (1.3.23-27).^[5]

Angelo's remorseless logic exposes the threat which Isabella's arguments pose to the political order. He sees that a thorough-going critique of the "gravity" in which, as he now admits, he "take[s] pride" would involve not only releasing Claudio, but many other, much more hardened wrongdoers: "O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves" (2.2.174-75). Although he ultimately excepts Claudio from this programme of corrupt clemency, purely on the grounds that the latter "might in the times to come have ta'en revenge, by so receiving a dishonor'd life," he might perhaps have proved as lenient as the Duke if he had continued to rule, although there is also nothing now to prevent him from behaving in a thoroughly tyrannical manner (4.4.28-32).

Moreover, Isabella's arguments also lead Angelo to discard the amalgam of piety and honour by which his own life has previously been regulated, which has hitherto led him to "stand at a guard with envy," while pursuing "profits of the mind: study and fast" (2.4.7-12, 1.3.50-52, 1.4.60-61). He understands that it would be inconsistent not to extend the same leniency to his own innately sinful nature as to the populace as a whole: "Blood thou art blood. Let's write 'good angel' on the devil's horn" (2.2.174-76). The conventional mixture of pride and piety which initially impels Angelo both to restrain his own desires and to seek to revive the old laws is clearly preferable to the humility and self-knowledge which subsequently liberate his sensuality and self-love, depriving him of a motive to rule justly, or even to control his personal desires. Here Shakespeare seems to anticipate an enlightenment in which artificial principles are stripped away in such a radical manner that nothing remains to limit desire except the duties which lasting attachments naturally generate. This is the deepest sense in which Christian mercy may "prove itself a bawd" (3.1.149): the doctrines of original sin and redemption may in the end encourage the more thoughtful of those living in a post-Christian era to define their own nature in the basest terms, while discarding the sublimated pride which, as the examples of Angelo and Isabella seem to indicate, generally reinforces moral and religious codes.

Just as Angelo's attraction to Isabella's apparently humble compassion undermines the moral principles which have hitherto impelled him to restrain himself and others, so Isabella's plea for clemency for her brother conflicts with her own personal code of virtue. Angelo's strategy, which is both shrewd and carefully considered (see 2.4.59-60), exposes the fact that Isabella does not dream of applying her arguments for a universal "natural guiltiness" to herself, despite her attempts to disarm the deputy through her conventionally Christian claim to be "frail" and "ignorant, and in nothing good, but graciously to know I am no better" (2.2.139, 2.4.76-77, 2.4.124-38). Unlike Angelo himself, whose position is now entirely consistent, Isabella fails to see that, according to her own previous argument, there is no reason why anyone should be able to restrain themselves any more reliably than they can restrain others. She is in fact self-indulgent in the same way as the Duke (see the concluding section of this essay), for she sets herself higher standards than she expects others to achieve, and feels no duty to promulgate the restraint which in reality she herself values so highly. Short of sacrificing her own virtue in the manner that Angelo suggests, the only way for her to avoid these inconsistencies would be to allow that it is possible to judge others as surely as she discriminates between sin and virtue in her personal life. Isabella herself is eventually forced to admit that it is absurd to excuse a sin which she herself would do anything to avoid committing, lest she should "die for ever": she is from the start "at war 'twixt will and will not" in pleading for Claudio's life, and ultimately declares, "To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean. I something do excuse the thing I hate, for his advantage that I dearly love" (2.4.107-08, 2.2.29-33, 2.4.118-20).

In the light of his own recent epiphany, Angelo now realises that Isabella's apparent humility conceals an egregious pride: "wisdom wishes to appear most bright when it doth tax itself" (2.4.78-81). As with Angelo himself--at least as we have hitherto seen him--Isabella's self-regard is of course sublimated by a serious piety: when we first meet her, she is "wishing [for] a more strict restraint" even than is normally imposed on the nuns of her chosen order, who are merely forbidden to speak while showing their faces to men (1.4.1-13). However, just as Angelo's fundamental self-love is exposed by the Duke's flattery, Isabella's susceptibility to Lucio's professions of admiration for her sexual "pow'r"-- "when maidens sue, men give like gods" (1.4.80-81)--reveals the desire for distinction which underlies her programme of self-denial. It is relevant to note that, in the final scene, after seemingly relishing the power that her beauty has exerted over Angelo, she apparently gives serious consideration to the Duke's marriage proposal (5.1.445-47, 5.1.534-37).^[6]

It is not necessarily to demean either Isabella's or Angelo's virtue to say that it is rooted in a desire for honour; indeed, Shakespeare may well believe that all conventional moral and religious codes essentially work by sublimating self-love in this way. Rather, the question which this section of the play raises concerns the usefulness or otherwise of the Christian faith in shaping that desire for just political ends. The relationship between Lucio and Isabella on the one hand and the Duke and Angelo on the other resembles that between the philosopher kings and their guardians in The Republic, in that both the former are shrewd atheists (see below) who are capable of manipulating pious belief. ^[7] However, the Christian faith is shown to be much less useful politically than Plato's noble lie.

The fact that both Angelo and Isabella have to be persuaded to abandon a purely contemplative life may remind us that Christianity values unworldliness above political engagement. The Duke is working largely--although, as we have seen, not entirely--against the grain of that faith in channelling Angelo's proud piety usefully into politics, and although Lucio is undoubtedly going with that grain when he flatters Isabella into using the "grace" of her "fair prayer to soften" Angelo's heart, Isabella is nevertheless able to reassure herself that she is delaying her entry into the convent for reasons that are themselves deeply unworldly (1.4.68-87). It is her detachment from the material world as well as her love for her brother which encourages her to plead for clemency for Claudio, when it is in fact against her deepest principles to do so. When Angelo compares siring an illegitimate child to murder, she replies that, "'tis set down so in heaven, but not in earth" (2.4.50). Both Isabella and Angelo retain a residual conception of a stern God who demands dutiful obedience in this life, while modelling authoritative rule, but in both cases, this conception is undermined by their faith in a redemptive saviour, who models a compassionate humility which transcends mundane affairs.

Although this residual conception is conventional, it is ultimately rooted in a natural need for justice. We witness the full force of Isabella's innate sense of justice when she inveighs forcefully against Angelo as soon as his "pernicious purpose" is revealed, abruptly abandoning her appeal to his compassion, which involved presenting herself, entirely disingenuously, as "frail," "soft" and "credulous" (2.4.124-54). She shows a similar fierce indignation when she brands Claudio a "beast," a "faithless coward" and a "dishonest wretch," declaring that he deserves to die for begging her to save his life by "bending down" (3.1.132-50).^[8] The implication is that Christian attempts to transcend such righteous indignation are bound to lead to hypocrisy, since it is in fact the natural response to egregious breaches of the "truth" upon which "societies" are founded.

Isabella unconsciously draws on a natural conception of justice while pleading for mercy for Angelo in the final scene: in effect, she argues that it would be iniquitous to execute Angelo on the grounds that "a due sincerity governed his deeds, till he did look on me," and that, as she belatedly acknowledges, her "brother had but justice, in that he did the thing for which he died" (5.1.445-49). At this point she also abandons the internalised conception of guilt which she advanced earlier in the play, and echoes Angelo's own contention that justice must primarily concern itself with behaviour: "His act did not o'ertake his bad intent...Thoughts are no subjects, intents but merely thoughts" (5.1.451-54; compare 2.2.136-41, 2.1.21-26). The unacknowledged corollary to her argument is that Angelo would in fact deserve to die if he had not initially been "sincer[e];" if her brother had not in fact broken the law; and if her own virginity had actually been taken.

Angelo's own behaviour in the final scene demonstrates the deep-seated nature of the need for justice. While his first request to be allowed to die is motivated by shame and a quasi-religious fear of the Duke's "pow'r divine"--thus again reminding us of the power of codes of honour and piety to reinforce the law--his second is much more heartfelt, since it is triggered by a natural feeling that he has let down those, like Escalus in particular, who, as he believes, relied upon his "temper'd judgment":

I am sorry that such sorrow I procure,

And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart

That I crave death more willingly than mercy:

'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it. (5.1.470-77; compare 5.1.366-74)

Angelo's sincere penitence confirms that his previous, apparently enlightened discovery that his own nature was primarily sensual and self-loving was in fact simply a secularised reiteration of the conventional doctrine of original sin (see 2.4.15-17). He only comes to understand his true nature in the speech quoted above, where he acknowledges that he is deeply moved by sympathetic ties. Ironically, we may infer from his overriding guilt that, despite ultimately requiring an uncongenial severity on the part of those in authority, the legal system is originally based on an innate need for justice, which arises spontaneously in response to the flouting of the "truth" that is required to sustain "fellowships." The Christian faith causes all sorts of disingenuousness by seeking to deny that this need runs as "deep" as the human sympathies by which it is naturally generated.

Shakespeare uses the less obtrusive subplot to flesh out his warning that Christian doctrine opposes the assertiveness which may be needed to defend the state. At the start of act 1, scene 2, the first gentleman prays for "Heaven [to] grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary's!" and goes on to maintain that "there's not a soldier of us all, that in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace" (1.2.4-5, 1.2.14-16). A truly devout Christian soldier might well feel torn between the spirited self-assertion which his profession demands and his faith, just as Angelo is torn between his wish to revive the old laws and his Christian conviction that humility and mercy are superior to proud severity. By contrast, Lucio's reference to "the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandements, but scrap'd one out of the table," namely, "'Thou shalt not steal,'" may remind us that Old Testament laws condemn only predatory violence (1.2.7-10). Unlike Christianity, these laws are thus easily compatible with the use of harsh deterrents to protect the state both from internal and external threats.

Shakespeare uses Escalus to reinforce the point that officials may be prevented by their Christian convictions from enforcing justice in the manner that their role requires:

Well; heaven forgive him! And forgive us all!

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall;

Some run from brakes of ice and answer none,

And some condemned for a fault alone. (2.1.37-40).

Escalus agrees that Angelo's strictness is "needful," and attempts to ensure that Elbow's peers cannot avoid taking their turn as constables, but, like Isabella, he prioritises the need to gain "heaven['s]" forgiveness for original sin over what he perceives to be the law's faltering and petty efforts to discriminate between virtue and vice (2.1.282, 2.1.257-75). It is ultimately Escalus's Christian faith which ensures that under his aegis "justice dissolves in the amoralism of nature," as one critic perceptively puts it.^[9] The practical effect of his pious convictions is revealed when he baulks at arresting Pompey and Froth, even though it is clear that they have both broken the laws which Angelo is attempting to revive (2.1.185-256). Unlike Angelo, who simply hopes that he will "whip them all," Escalus has the patience and experience to discriminate carefully between the law-abiding Elbow on the one side and Pompey and Froth on the other, but he lacks a driving motive to pursue justice (2.1.137).

As we have seen in the case of Angelo, this state of mind is conducive to corruption: since Escalus releases Pompey without punishment, even though the evidence against the bawd seems clear, we might even wonder whether he is himself the "wise burgher" who preserves the high-status brothels in the city, while allowing "houses of resort in the suburbs [to] be pull'd down" (1.2.95-103). There is no doubt that he is swayed by Claudio's "noble" birth, and perhaps, since he reprimands him only in the mildest terms, by Froth's "fourscore pound a year" (2.1.6-7, 2.1.122-23, 2.1.193-96, 2.1.203-12). By contrast, Angelo initially attempts to punish all breaches of the law indiscriminately, regardless of whether they are committed in the city or the suburbs (1.2.93-96).

Escalus's Christian faith legitimises his natural warm-heartedness. While, as we have seen, the need for justice runs deep on an individual level, organised legal systems are bound to impose difficult demands on those in authority, who are required to detach themselves from their natural sympathy for those whom they are appointed to punish in a manner that may be both personally uncongenial and generally unpopular. The provost, who is himself keen to avoid having to superintend Claudio's execution, treats Abhorson as if he were little better than a bawd, even though the hangman clearly plays a vital role in enforcing the laws which are designed precisely to control such immorality (2.2.7-14, 4.2.29-31). Similarly, just as the Duke appoints Angelo to revive respect for the laws, partly in order to avoid being blamed for "tyranny" if he himself should "strike and gall" his subjects, and partly because he finds severity personally uncongenial, so the men in Elbow's ward are "glad" to pay the latter to serve as constable, a role which he has performed with "great pains" for seven and a half years: "They do you wrong to put you so oft upon't" (1.3.8, 1.3.36, 2.1.257-73). Elbow's wife is slandered by Pompey for his pains, rather as Angelo is generally reviled for his austere sternness (2.1.165-79, 1.2.120-23, 1.2.157-71, 1.4.57-61).

Ironically, Shakespeare leaves it to Isabella, who is the very embodiment of Christian compassion, to make the key point that mercy may often "prove itself a bawd" (3.1.149). Isabella's intervention is itself tainted, originally by the fact that it is a consequence of Claudio's shrewd understanding that "in her youth there is a prone and speechless dialect, such as move men," and subsequently by Lucio's eager support (1.2.182-89). Lucio successfully subverts the new "imposition[s]" by exploiting Isabella's potent combination of Christian compassion and sexual charm: "when maidens sue," he declares, "men give like gods" in response to their "fair prayer[s]" -especially, one might add, when they "weep and kneel," while insistently reminding a male interlocutor of his sensual nature and of their own "soft[ness]" and "frail[ty]" (1.4.79-83, 1.4.69, 2.2.136-42, 2.4.128-30).^[10] In the end, as one critic puts it, Isabella herself effectively acknowledges that "the actual role she had played with Angelo was not that of novice at all, but that of a woman" (5.1.445-47).^[11] Her intervention is also tainted by her instant readiness to act the role of "bare procuress" in bringing Mariana and Angelo together (3.1.197-269).^[12] It is no coincidence that Isabella's passionate plea for mercy on the grounds that society exculpates the wealthy and powerful, while condemning their social inferiors, is echoed by Pompey when he is seeking to rationalise his practice of "buy[ing] and sell[ing] men and women like beasts" (2.2.127-31, 3.2.1-10).

The conversations between Angelo and Isabella link mercy to bawdiness in another way, for it is precisely Isabella's previous plea for compassion which leaves her with no logical way of resisting Angelo's arguments for sleeping with him. Isabella's "ignorant" or, more probably, seemingly ignorant assumption that the "sin" to which Angelo is obliquely referring in his attempt to seduce her is either his own putative forgiveness of Claudio, or her plea for leniency itself, may be intended to hint that mercy can be as "sin[ful]" as the vice which it forgives -or indeed, from a political point of view, even more so, since it encourages the commission of innumerable "future evils" (2.4.60-77, 2.2.93-99). The Duke is himself clearly aware that "we bid this be done, when evil deeds have their permissive pass, and not the punishment," while the compassionate Escalus echoes the same view: "mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; pardon is still the nurse of second woe" (1.3.37-39, 2.1.283-85). It is significant that the three characters in the play who consistently prioritise mercy over justice all acknowledge the dangers of this approach.

Philosophy and the Law

The Duke's underlying motives are revealed in the early scene in which he explains the purpose of his temporary retirement to Friar Thomas. He tells the friar that he expects that in his absence Angelo will revive the old "strict statutes and biting laws (the needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds)" which are needed to rein in a lawless community, where "liberty plucks justice by the nose; the baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart goes all decorum" (1.3.19-21). Although the Duke "loves the people," as he claims, he has hitherto behaved like a "fond father...," who places "threat'ning twigs of birch...in their children's sight for terror, not to use," with the result that his rules have eventually "become...more mock'd than fear'd" (1.3.23-27). Paradoxically, it is thus precisely his reluctance to accept that the political order cannot be sustained simply by kindness which actually degrades the care which he can offer his subjects. The Duke's efforts to preserve the purity of his own benevolence, while at the same time restraining the worst excesses of the populace, lead him to behave in a disingenuous manner which, as we shall see, is entirely characteristic: he cannot bear even to instruct Angelo to impose rigorous sanctions, but instead gives him the choice whether "to enforce or qualify the laws;" and yet he has clearly selected a deputy who is bound to choose "mortality" over "mercy" (1.1.64-66, 1.1.44-45).

The Duke certainly shows some concern for the welfare of his subjects in at least delegating to Angelo the task of controlling the rampant lawlessness of Vienna. In reality, however, he considers that this strategy is unlikely to succeed, since it is probable that "power" will "change" his deputy's "purpose" (1.3.54). At the same time as hoping that Angelo's noble and pious code will encourage him to revive the strict laws which are needed to protect the public, he fundamentally distrusts his artificial repression of passion, which he sees as barely disguising an egregious self-love: Angelo "stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses that his blood flows; or that his appetite is more to bread than stone" (1.3.51-53). The Duke's idealistic attempt to base politics on natural affections is ultimately incompatible with just political rule: he is neither willing himself to adopt the studied sternness which political authority often entails, nor to trust Angelo's conventional combination of honour and piety to do so, even though the play suggests that this combination of motives can be more robust than the Duke believes -as we have seen, Angelo's self-love is thoroughly sublimated in a manner which encourages him to rule justly: ironically, he is not corrupted by "power," but by the Christian critique of pride.

On a deeper level, far from reflecting a natural warm-heartedness in the way that he presumably believes, the Duke's leniency is itself primarily self-regarding. Truly thoughtful and caring rulers, like truly "fond" fathers--in the modern sense of that word--might well display an artificial sternness when disciplining those in their care, rather than attempting to secure their grateful affection through a clemency which they know may ultimately prove to be highly damaging (1.3.31-43). The unacknowledged corollary of the Duke's overmastering desire to avoid "slander" is in fact an intense urge to win praise from the populace (1.3.43). Although he declares that he eschews "assemblies where youth, and cost, witless bravery keeps," and believes that he "does not relish well" his subjects' "loud applause and aves vehement," he ends the play by "stag[ing]" his generosity "to their eyes" in precisely the manner which he originally claims should not be affected by men "of safe discretion" (1.3.8-10, 1.1.67-72; see below).

Furthermore, the haughty fashion in which the Duke dismisses "witless bravery" and even "the dribbling dart of love," suggests that he actually prides himself even on his apparent rejection of the world and devotion to contemplation as much as Angelo and Isabella do (1.3.7-10, 1.1.27-29, 1.3.2-3). His conceit that Angelo "stands at a guard with envy" inadvertently provides a hint that his apparently abstract interest in "see[ing] if power change [the] purpose" of "seemers" is in reality driven by his "envy" of a man whose reputation for austerity exceeds his own (1.3.51-54; compare 3.2.235-37). The fencing image implies that his desire to penetrate Angelo's "guard" is emulative rather than purely philosophical, as he seems to believe. Later on in the play, the Duke is doubtless gratified by the extended praise which he manages to glean from Escalus, before his eager enquiries are interrupted, for his apparently unstinting efforts to "know himself" (3.2.230-41). It is significant that in the seemingly numerous autobiographical "bringings-forth" by which the Duke strives to curate his image, he prioritises intellectual over political and military achievements: he wishes to "appear to the envious a scholar, a statesman, and a soldier" (3.2.144-46).

This is not to deny that the Duke's disposition is contemplative: his claim to have "ever lov'd the life removed" seems to be true, since it is clear from his conversation with Friar Thomas that he has either retreated to a monastery before, or at least frequently expressed a wish to do so -although we may infer that he is not actually as thoughtful as he would like to believe from the fact that during his current retirement he seems more anxious to display his compassion than to meditate (1.3.7-10). The arguments by which the Duke tries to reconcile Claudio to dying appear on the face of it to be compatible with Christian humility, but he actually goes far beyond Isabella's critique of pride, which, however radical it might seem, is still moderated by her assumption that human affairs are significant in the eyes of a merciful God (2.2.73-79). For the Duke, human life is merely a "breath...servile to...hourly afflict[ions]," while all our "accommodations...are nurs'd by baseness," since humankind merely "exists on many a thousand grains that issue out of dust" (3.1.8-21). His underlying materialism may be inferred from the fact that he makes no reference to the afterlife in this speech, but simply equates death with sleep.^[13] Elsewhere in the play he refers to the afterlife only in public scenes (3.1.169-70, 3.2.30-31, 4.3.67-69, 5.1.480-86). The Duke apparently follows Socrates in believing that it is only by "studying dying and being dead" that one may divest oneself of a groundless pride: those who fancy themselves "noble" and "valiant" forget that worldly goods like riches, health and beauty are all transient (3.1.13-41). ^[14]

The Duke's reflections have certainly had some influence on his conduct: Escalus's view that he is naturally "a gentleman of all temperance," who, "above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself," is much more likely to be accurate than Lucio's slanders (3.2.237; contrast 3.2.117-20, 3.2.181-84).^[15] Ironically, however, despite seeming to encourage a radical humility, the Duke's philosophising merely facilitates the self-love by which it is primarily inspired; and, moreover, in a manner that is particularly dangerous to the state. Whereas Angelo's pursuit of heavenly "glory" demands that he strive to maintain a sturdy indifference to common opinion, the Duke's pride is not sublimated by piety in this way, which means that he is completely reliant on the putative affection of his subjects to provide the high regard which he craves. Neither piety nor shame impel the enlightened Duke to control the excesses of his subjects in his own person, or restrain him from appointing a deputy to do so whom he expects, and indeed in large part hopes, will fail.

Moreover, the Duke is able to detach himself from the "stew" of corruption which has in fact been fermented partly by his own rampant desire to gain his subjects' affection, precisely because his philosophy leaves no room for "the dribbling dart of love": "friend hast thou none," he argues, on the grounds that even deep attachments last only as long as the bodies of lovers (5.1.18-19, 3.1.28-32). Love of country is presumably one of the many passions which the Duke dismisses as an evanescent "dream" in the "after-dinner's sleep" of life (3.1.32-34). In reality, his very compassion, which he perhaps imagines is born of a combination of natural benevolence and searching reflections on the pervasive fragility of the human condition, is itself merely one of these "dream[s]," since it floats free of the duties and restraints which genuinely sympathetic attachments impose. Thus, the Duke's nihilistic philosophy undermines any motive which he might have had to rule justly, while at the same time allowing his self-love to flourish freely in a manner which remains entirely unacknowledged.

The Duke's decision to appoint Angelo as his deputy, while himself adopting the role of friar, frees him up to embark on the task of helping his subjects to transcend self-love and sensual desire, as he imagines, a task which he clearly finds far more rewarding than that of imposing strict laws, presumably because it tends to evoke gratitude rather than resentment (see, for instance, 3.1.41). Although at first the extreme decadence of Vienna forces him to consider reintroducing the old, strict regime, as the play goes on we can see that the idealistic Duke feels free to side-line laws which, from his point of view, merely encourage the pride of officials like Angelo and the petty fears of offenders, both of which motives seem futile if one considers that humanity is "merely...death's fool," and to urge his subjects to base their conduct instead purely on their own passionate hearts and capacity for philosophical thought (3.1.11). His efforts allow Shakespeare to satirise apparently benevolent and enlightened attempts to base social mores on voluntary principles rather than on strict laws.

The Duke's failure to induce Claudio to resign himself willingly to death suggests that philosophy has only a limited power to control self-love, at least in the general populace. After overhearing enough of the conversation which follows his analysis of the ephemerality of all human endeavours to know that, far from accepting his own insignificance, Claudio is now intent on badgering Isabella to save his life by acceding to Angelo's sexual demands, the Duke abruptly changes tack (3.1.132-50). Having previously left Claudio's fate indeterminate, since he wished to show him that there is less to choose between "death or life" than he imagines, he now resorts to a blunt confirmation of the legal position: "to-morrow you must die" (3.1.1-6, 3.1.169). It is this announcement, rather than the Duke's philosophical musings, which finally induces Claudio to declare that he is "so out of love with life that [he] will sue to be rid of it," and consequently to relax the pressure which he has been applying to Isabella (3.1.171-72). Thus, the Duke's dealings with Claudio ultimately underline the unrivalled deterrent power of legal sanctions.

Shakespeare suggests that codes of honour and piety are only effective where they are underwritten by such sanctions. Ironically, far from deterring him from attempting to persuade Isabella to prostitute herself in order to save his life, Claudio's intense fear of being "perdurably fin'd" in an afterlife, where he vividly imagines his spirit "howling" forever, actually increases his fear of execution at first, and, paradoxically, leads him to ignore his sister's warnings of divine retribution, as well as her appeals to his sense of shame (3.1.114-149, 3.1.63-80). This gives a clear hint that, however terrifying the threat of Hell or purgatory might seem, it cannot be relied upon to restrain self-love. It is only when the Duke is driven to confirm that "tomorrow [he] must die" that Claudio finally "go[es] to [his] knees" without protest and "make[s] ready," presumably with prayers designed precisely to mitigate any divine sanctions which he may have incurred (3.1.169-70). Similarly, the contrast which the Duke implicitly draws between Claudio and Isabella, who has "the truth of honor in her," eventually shames Claudio into apologising to his sister, but again, only after he has learnt that he "must die" (3.1.164, 3.1.171). Although shame and the fear of God could never match the force of legal deterrents, we may infer from these latter points that they may nevertheless often help to reinforce the laws.

After expressing a concern lest Juliet should regret her affair with Claudio simply "as that the sin hath brought [her] to this shame, which sorrow is always to ourselves, not heaven," the Duke tries to persuade her to "spare heaven as we love it," rather than "as we stand in fear" (2.3.30-34). Here again, as when he was ruling in his own person, he wishes to substitute a morality based idealistically on untrammelled love for imperatives which are enforced through fear, whether of worldly dishonour, divine sanctions or stern legal deterrents, all of which simply serve to encourage a self-regard that seems utterly futile in the light of the Duke's relentless focus on human transience. The atheistic Duke's advice to Julia is presumably accommodated to her faith in a manner which is designed to lead her to transcend what he conceives to be her self-love insofar as she is capable of doing so.

Once the Duke has left, however, after informing her casually that her "partner...must die to-morrow," Juliet reveals that her overriding emotion is simply terror at the prospective loss of her beloved: "O injurious love, that respites me a life whose very comfort is still a dying horror" (2.3.35-42). Although, for all we know, Juliet may well also be subject to shame and a fear of divine retribution--deterrents which, in the light of the above argument, the Duke arguably dismisses rather too glibly--the overwhelming intensity of her "horror" is a sign that she could probably only ever have been restrained from consummating her relationship with Claudio by the threat of legal sanctions.

Juliet's brief soliloquy, like those of her famous namesake, reminds us of the binding force of deep attachments. Her implication--which confirms the truth of her fervid assertion that she loves her beloved as dearly as herself (2.3.24-25)--that she would not wish to live without Claudio, points to the power of deep attachment to transcend self-love. Shakespeare implies that this power is far greater either than the piety of Angelo and Isabella or the philosophy of the Duke, even though all three of the latter characters initially profess an ascetic self-denial. Indeed, the original determination of these characters to lead a "life removed" is perhaps itself a sign that they lack the deep eroticism which encourages both Juliet and her namesake to override their self-regard. If the above argument is correct, it is in fact deeply ironic that the Duke imagines that he is instructing Juliet in self-denial. Whereas the ineffectiveness of the Duke's lecture to Claudio indicates that Shakespeare agrees with Plato's view that on the deepest level the passions of many who are primarily attached to the body are opposed to any restraint,^[16] his portrayal of Juliet highlights the radical differences between the two thinkers.^[17]

The Duke's self-regarding pursuit of his subjects' grateful affection continually impels him to personalise legal processes which, as he himself actually understands as well as Angelo, are primarily designed to provide broad, impersonal deterrents (1.3.19-31, 2.1.1-4, 2.2.90-104). As with Claudio and Juliet, he tries to convince Pompey to "mend" rather than simply punishing him, confronting him with the fact that he makes a living through the "abominable and beastly touches" of his prostitutes, but this appeal to his capacity to understand and transcend his own abjectness--a capacity which, the Duke seems to assume, lurks just beneath the surface even of his most decadent subjects--again proves to be ineffectual (3.2.24-27).^[18] Just as in the previous scene the Duke was eventually forced to abandon his lofty philosophical musings and simply exploit Claudio's fear of the law and divine sanctions, so now Pompey's unrepentant protests compel him to abandon his original attempt to reason with him: eventually, after reminding him curtly that he will probably be damned, he urges Elbow to "take him to prison" (3.2.28-31). Even at this point, however, he still concerns himself with the narrow--and almost certainly futile--task of "profit[ing]" Pompey personally through "correction and instruction," rather than with the wider and far more potent functions of the legal system, namely prevention and deterrence (3.2.32-33).

Having failed to persuade Juliet, Claudio and Pompey to transcend their fear of the law, the Duke fails for a final time with Barnadine, a self-confessed murderer (4.2.62, 4.2.139). His initial response to Barnadine's insistence that, far from "look[ing] forward on the journey [he] shall go," as the Duke "beseech[es]" him to do, he has "been drinking hard all night, and will have more time to prepare," is to repeat that the murderer must be brought "to the block," since he has a "gravel heart," yet in the end, ironically, he delays precisely for this reason, declaring that, since he is "a creature unprepared, unmeet for death," it would be "damnable" to "transport him in the mind he is" (4.3.53-69). Here Shakespeare hints that, although the Duke is doubtless hoping to soften Barnadine's heart through his lenience, he is more concerned to preserve the purity of his own compassion, in which he secretly takes such pride.

Under the Duke's old regime, the provost has "oft awak'd" Barnadine "as if to carry him to execution, and show'd him a seeming warrant for it," but "it hath not mov'd him at all" towards penitence (4.1.142-52). Barnadine has learnt to exploit the fact that those around him prioritise his care, or, more accurately perhaps, their own compassionate hearts, over his punishment: "he hath evermore had the liberty of the prison," and feels emboldened to "swear [he] will not die today, for any man's persuasion," knowing that his would be executioners feel bound to wait for his "consent" (4.2.147-48, 4.3.53-63). In the final scene, the Duke goes even further towards allowing "liberty [to] pluck...justice by the nose," and releases Barnadine altogether, apparently in the hope that he will be moved by this act of mercy "to provide for better times to come" in the afterlife (1.3.29-30, 5.1.480-86). Like the "fond fathers," the Duke doubtless hopes that compassion will breed compassion, whereas Shakespeare's portrayal of hardened narcissists and sensualists like Pompey, Lucio and Barnadine is designed to suggest that the "truth" which loving relationships naturally demand needs to be safeguarded by strict deterrents.

The story of Barnadine finally comes close to satirising explicitly the Duke's compassionate approach. Readers and viewers who might sympathise deeply with Juliet, pity Claudio, and laugh at the way in which even Pompey escapes punishment through his appointment as an executioner, could hardly agree with this latest example of the Duke's leniency, since Barnadine is much more clearly a danger to the community (4.2.8-59). His release shows how little the Duke really concerns himself with the fate of that community as a whole. Not only is Barnadine, unlike Claudio, "reakless, and fearless of what's...to come," but, unlike Pompey and Lucio, he remains as obdurately unaffected by Angelo's stricter impositions as he is by the Duke's unfulfilled threats, since he "apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep" (4.2.142-52). It would seem that such individuals can only be prevented from committing crimes by execution or life imprisonment, since they are immune to deterrents. The exigencies of political rule have clearly led the Duke himself to take this view in the past, since he too has conducted executions -although, by contrast with Angelo's strict regime, it seems that his custom was simply to release all those who did not merit the most severe punishment (4.2.132-34; contrast 4.3.4-19).

The Duke's compassionate approach has merely convinced Lucio that he "had some feeling for the sport; he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy" (3.2.119-20). Lucio is inclined to judge the Duke by his own standards, assuming that he is frequently drunk and would "mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown bread and garlic," precisely because his ruler has presented himself as a peer who can be "know[n]" and "love[d]," rather than as a lofty authority (3.2.117-28, 3.2.181-84, 3.2.149). Lucio has absolutely no respect for the Duke: when the latter tells him, as he does repeatedly in the final scene, that he was "not bid to speak," he replies insolently, "No my good lord, nor wish'd to hold my peace" (5.1.78-87; see above). The generalised way in which the Duke declares that "no might nor greatness in mortality can censure scape," and asks, "What king so strong can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?" allows him to imply that he himself has displayed strength and "greatness in mortality" without directly making such an obviously disingenuous claim: he could be understood to mean that anyone would find it impossible to control such individuals (3.2.185-89).

Lucio's slanders show that the Duke's desire to ingratiate himself with the populace is incompatible with the respect which rulers need to inspire in order to exert authority, a respect which is inevitably compounded partly of fear. Lucio is the Duke's nemesis, since he embodies the self-loving and potentially immoderate elements within human nature which may only be controlled by enforcing the laws strictly. All of this is not to deny that the most effective rulers might be admired as well as feared, but such admiration is necessarily quite distinct from the reciprocated affection which the Duke seeks. Rulers who truly care for their subjects must presumably accept that they cannot express this care directly in the way that they might in personal relationships, or in many cases be rewarded with the gratitude that they deserve.

The fact that Lucio is the last person to be pardoned in the play, even after Angelo and Barnadine, furnishes strong evidence for the Duke's fundamental vanity. It is significant that Lucio's slanders continue to exasperate him more than any of the other vices and crimes with which he has had to deal--and certainly more than the plight of Kate Keepdown--even when he is apparently immersed in what one might assume to be more pressing matters (3.2.185-89, 4.1.59-64).^[19] The ease with which he is distracted from his plan to save Claudio's life and provide Mariana with a husband provides further evidence that he merely "dream[s]" of compassion, while his real concerns are primarily self-regarding.

As well as encouraging his subjects to transcend the laws, the Duke subverts them at every turn in the second half of the play. Angelo's fall gives the Duke a pretext to focus on extending compassion to individuals like Claudio, whom he now figures as being persecuted by a corrupt authority, rather than on the laws which could have helped to reverse the general "dissolution" of "goodness" in Vienna (3.1.222-23). The shallowness of this new approach, which is sustained throughout the last two acts, is underlined by the insistent rhymes and unusual employment of heavily accented, end-stopped trochaic tetrameter in the soliloquy in which it is announced (3.2.261-77).^[20] This soliloquy encourages most who see or read the play to move easily from their condemnation of Angelo's hypocrisy to a critique of the severity of his judgements, thus avoiding the problem of the decadence of Vienna, which seemed at first to be the key theme of the play. Shakespeare's calculated obfuscation of this issue is facilitated by the fact that audiences will generally be more interested in individuals than abstract political themes.

The Duke encourages this confusion when he remarks that, were Angelo "meal'd with that which he corrects, then were he tyrannous," for this would only be true if his deputy were indeed to allow his private sins to affect his public judgements; a step which he never actually takes in the play (4.2.78-85). The shallowness of the Duke's original impulse to care for his subjects by delegating his authority to Angelo is confirmed by the assumption which he now reveals that the personal venality which he expects his deputy to exhibit would automatically invalidate the latter's efforts to reform Viennese society: he does not consider that it might not matter whether "thieves pass on thieves," even if they are "guiltier than him they try," nor that the individual failings of judges might not necessarily prevent them from arriving at just verdicts, or, crucially, diminish the deterrent effect of the sanctions which they impose (2.1.18-26).

The Duke's contradictions are highlighted by his meditation on the pardon which he assumes Angelo will grant Claudio after sleeping with Isabella, which includes a rare acknowledgement that Claudio did after all break the law: "When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended, that for the fault's love is th' offender friended" (4.2.112-13). Although he thus apparently reassures himself that he is continuing to pursue the aim of reforming Vienna, we may infer from his subsequent efforts to save Claudio's life, and the unconditional mercy which he eventually extends to him, that if Angelo had actually kept to his side of the bargain, the Duke would have done nothing to reverse it (4.2.92-209, 5.1.490-91). Because the audience is from now on encouraged to follow the Duke in focusing on the individual issue of Angelo's corruption, it is easy to forget that in his efforts to defend Claudio from what he now styles as a "tyrannous" regime, he subverts the very laws which he previously wished to revive (4.2.84). Originally, it should be remembered, he simply strove to reconcile Juliet and Claudio to the sanctions which they have incurred by their transgression. As even Isabella herself eventually admits--while still under the impression that her brother has actually been executed--Claudio "had but justice, in that he did the thing for which he died" (5.1.448-49). The execution of Claudio would have been entirely in accord with a law, while, incidentally, bearing out the point that "thieves may pass on thieves" with perfect justice.

The Duke subverts a variety of other laws in order to prosecute his benevolent schemes. He actively encourages Mariana to commit the same offence as Juliet and Claudio -and, it should be remembered, with the intention of marrying her to a would-be rapist.^[21] He justifies his plan for Mariana to sleep with Angelo in place of Isabella--a plan which involves exploiting her reliance on his assumed spiritual authority, which he confirms by "confess[ing]" her, even though he is not qualified to do so (5.1.527)^[22]--by assuring her that "'tis no sin," since he is her "husband on a pre-contract," Angelo having withdrawn from the engagement when she failed to produce a dowry (4.1.65-72, 3.1.224-27). Here, as always, the Duke prioritises compassion, in this case for Mariana's "tears" and "lamentation," over strict legality: Angelo was quite within his rights to withdraw from a contract on which his fiancée had defaulted. Moreover, we should not dismiss Angelo's claim that he withdrew "chiefly" because Mariana's "reputation was disvalued in levity," since we only have the disingenuous Duke's word for it that this is a lie (5.1.217-22). Lucio's blunt comment that if Mariana is neither maid, wife or widow, she might be a "punk" points to the seediness of the Duke's machinations in this part of the play (5.1.177-80).

Similarly, the Duke eventually induces the initially reluctant provost not only to disobey Angelo's orders, but to deceive his superior by substituting another head for that of Claudio (4.2.159-209). At first, the provost strives to restrain his sympathy for Claudio, but subsequently, under the Duke's auspices, he even begins proactively to suggest new schemes to subvert Angelo's orders (2.2.2-12, 3.2.60-61, 4.3.69-92). Overall, we may say that Lucio's description of Vincentio as a "Duke of dark corners," who would "have dark deeds darkly answer'd," never "bring[ing] them to light," seems entirely justified (4.3.156-58, 3.2.176-78).^[23] His various compassionate subterfuges contrast starkly with the transparent "proclamation" and publicly advertised sanctions by which Angelo seeks to deter potential offenders (1.2.93-94, 1.2.116-19).

The Duke does not in the end hide his casual attitude to the law in "dark corners," where it would at least not undermine public trust in the legal system. Despite his earlier claim that he does "not relish well...loud applause and aves vehement," he ensures that his subjects are there to witness his exposure of Angelo and his liberal dispensation of pardons in the final scene (1.1.69-70, 4.4.5-17, 4.5.6-9, 4.6.12-15). Here he endorses the actions both of Mariana and the provost, despite publicly acknowledging that the latter's actions at least were morally dubious (5.1.419-22, 5.1.456-62, 5.1.530-34). Although he threatens to execute Lucio, he eventually does nothing more than force him to marry his "punk," while, as we have seen, he simply releases Barnadine in the blind hope that he will reform (5.1.507-24, 5.1.482-86). In the end, neither Angelo nor Claudio is given "Measure still for Measure" (5.1.400-17, 5.1.496-98). Angelo's pardon in particular seems calculated to frustrate the "strong indignant claim of justice" both of the audience and the assembled crowd.^[24] All these actions will doubtless ensure that legal sanctions again "become...more mock'd than fear'd," with the inevitable result that "truth" will once again be degraded to the point where "societies" and families are no longer "secure;" once again, we may infer, "liberty [will] pluck...justice by the nose," while "the baby beats the nurse" (1.3.226-31, 3.2.226-28). The populace may assume from now on that the regime will tolerate not only extra-marital sex and oath-breaking, but slander, corruption and even murder.^[25]

The Duke perhaps betrays a guilty awareness that his actions have been deeply inconsistent when he accuses Lucio of branding him "a madman," for the latter only actually censures him for incontinence (5.1.500-03, 3.2.117-28, 3.2.181-84, 4.3.161-62). His inconsistency is underlined in the letters which he sends towards the end of the play, which "disvouch'd" previous instructions to prepare for his return in a manner which Angelo for one finds "uneven and distracted" to the point of "madness" (4.4.1-5). The Duke's original instructions were seemingly for a less public transition of power, but it seems that he has subsequently decided that the ceremony must happen "at the gates," and that all those who "crave redress of justice...should exhibit their petitions in the street" (4.4.5-10). This indecision might remind us that the Duke could have exposed Angelo, issued his pardons and revealed that Claudio was alive in private. One may surmise that he has been vacillating between his reluctance to reveal the extent to which he has subverted the laws and his pressing desire to exhibit his benevolence to his people.

The parallel between the portrayal of the murderous Barnadine as "apprehend[ing] death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep" and the Duke's declaration that humanity has neither "youth nor age, but as it were an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both," may be designed to underline the dangers of philosophic detachment (4.2.142-52, 3.1.32-34). Despite his superficial compassion, the Duke himself is in reality as thoroughly emancipated as Barnadine, not only from the conventional codes of shame and piety which normally help to moderate self-love, but also from attachments, both patriotic and personal, and the self-denying duties which they naturally entail. As we have seen, he dismisses love itself as "a dribbling dart," of no more significance than the other transient goods which the world seemingly has to offer, such as nobility, riches and health: "Friend hast thou none" (1.3.1-6, 3.1.28).

Indeed, the Duke shows a "supreme indifference to human feeling" in pursuing his desire to distinguish himself.^[26] He admires Isabella's "goodness" and "beauty" sufficiently to propose to her in the end, but we may deduce that he is by no means "attorneyed to [her] service" in the way that he claims, since his plan to "keep her ignorant of her good" seems designed to gratify his own desire to bring her "heavenly comforts of despair, when it is least expected," and no doubt to impress his large audience, at the expense of delaying her release from grief over her brother's death (3.1.180-84, 5.1.381-89, 5.1.490-93, 4.3.107-11). This detachment also manifests itself in the casual manner in which he tells Juliet of her lover's imminent execution-- "Your partner, as I hear, is to die to-morrow" (2.3.37)--and in the way in which he toys with Angelo's emotions in the last scene, while effectively torturing Mariana with the expectation that her new husband will immediately be executed (5.1.400-55). Far from teaching him a deep humility, as he imagines, his nihilistic philosophy simply encourages him to pursue his ambitions without being impeded by the restraints which personal and patriotic attachments might normally impose.

Shakespeare's critique of the Duke implies that the fulfilling "fellowships" which naturally sustain "societies" require true philosophers to focus on an intermediate sphere, situated somewhere between Vincentio's panoptic focus on the ultimate insignificance of all human endeavours, which is in fact irrelevant to constant lovers, and, at the other extreme, the fickle distractions of self-love and immoderate sensuality (3.2.226-28). ^[27] The ultimate purpose of the law seems to be to protect this sphere, guaranteeing the "truth" which "make[s] societies secure" by depriving these latter distractions of the "security" which "make[s] fellowships accurs'd." The Duke knows that the struggle to create an enclave of "security" for "fellowships" is perpetual, since self-love is as instinctive as the desire to form lasting attachments, yet he is not much affected by the knowledge: "Much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of the world. This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news" (3.2.222-30).

Conclusion

The play starts from the assumption that strict legal deterrents are needed in order to protect "truth" and secure the "fellowships" and in particular, one may presume, the families upon which society is founded from the depredations of self-love and immoderate sensuality. These lasting attachments naturally encourage many to restrain, or even in some cases to transcend their self-love, but at the same time they may themselves usefully be reinforced by laws against extra-marital sex. Paradoxically, strictly administered laws are ultimately more compassionate than leniency, since they express a "pity [for] those...which a dismiss'd offense would after gall" (2.2.101-02). The law can still fulfil its vital function as a deterrent, even if some judges are corrupt and many offences are missed. Although the power of codes of shame and piety to restrain the populace should by no means be discounted, these codes can only function effectively as adjuncts to the concrete and immediate threat of legal sanctions. Characters like Lucio and Pompey, who are moved neither by these codes nor by lasting attachments, may only be controlled by the threat of such sanctions, while the few, like Barnadine, who are impervious even to these deterrents simply need to be prevented from committing further crimes, presumably either by execution or life imprisonment. Overall, the key functions of the law are prevention and, in particular, deterrence, rather than rehabilitation or retribution, since these are the functions which protect the community as a whole.

Although there is an innate need for justice, which is naturally provoked by the flouting of the "truth" that is required to sustain lasting relationships, the dispassionate legal systems which are the ultimate expression of this need demand that those who enforce them preserve a cool, unsympathetic approach which is bound to feel unnatural. Nevertheless, the Duke's initial manipulation of Angelo implies that many may be moved to take on this uncongenial task by codes of piety and honour. This combination of motives is more robust than the Duke imagines: far from being corrupted by "power," Angelo remains thoroughly committed to his new role until Isabella reminds him so forcefully that it conflicts with Christian doctrine. Indeed, Angelo's initial careful enforcement of the laws suggests that traditional codes of virtue are robust precisely because they are rooted in sublimated pride.

Isabella shows that the task of those who are entrusted with enforcing the law is fundamentally incompatible with the central tenets of Christian doctrine, which suggest, not only that fallen humanity is incapable of administering the law equitably, but that in any case the attempt to do so is bound to be tainted by pride, and indeed hubris, since it involves adopting a harsher approach than that of the merciful God upon whom all ultimately depend for redemption. Since all are innately guilty, one should ideally spend one's life contemplating humbly one's own need for redemption, while forgiving the sins of others, since these are merely the external symptoms of an ineluctable weakness. Thus, Christian doctrine legitimises the natural reluctance which many rulers and officials may feel to enforce strict deterrents.

Although the portrayal of Isabella and Angelo indicates that there are residual elements within the Christian canon which encourage just rule, since the old idea of a stern, authoritative God who demands dutiful service still survives even in the New Testament, the play suggests that these ultimately clash with the key doctrines outlined above. Indeed, the conversations between Isabella and Angelo reveal that these doctrines also undermine codes of personal probity: there is no motive for an individual who believes that they are ineluctably flawed even to control their own behaviour, let alone that of others, particularly if they come to understand, as Angelo does, that conventional moral principles are themselves rooted in sublimated pride. Angelo illustrates both the ways of resolving the inconsistencies in Christian doctrine in quick succession: one may either expect the same high standards of others as one expects of oneself, or one may abandon these standards completely. His moral descent shows that a secularised version of the doctrine of original sin may ultimately promote an enlightenment which threatens not only faith in just authority, but also the codes of piety and honour which promote personal virtue.

The Duke's adoption of the role of friar, combined with his attempt to induce Juliet to transcend self-regard through religious devotion, suggests that there may be a symbiotic relationship in early modern times between a piety which identifies God with compassionate love and an 'enlightened' liberalism. Indeed, Wilson Knight notes that the Duke resembles Jesus Himself in his preference for "honest impurity" over "Pharasaic self-righteousness," and in his willingness to create "apparent injustice" through his unstinting mercy.^[28] His proposal to Isabella at the end of the play directs our attention to the similarities between Christian doctrine and the Duke's philosophical ideas. Like Isabella, whose "goodness" and "grace" he so admires, the Duke has double standards: Escalus's account of his habit of "rejoicing to see another merry," while remaining unmoved himself, may be designed to echo Isabella's implication--admittedly as parodied by Angelo--that her brother's "sliding" was rather "a merriment than a vice," a view which of course she would not dream of applying to herself (5.1.534-39, 3.1.180-84, 3.2.232-37, 2.4.114-16). The Duke resembles Isabella in treating others compassionately, while exercising a strict control over his own sensual desire -although in his case his ascetism is not rooted in conventional piety, but in his naturally contemplative disposition. Neither character focuses with sufficient clarity on the need to deter the intemperate section of the populace from "ravin[ing] down their proper bane," and in the process, degrading the "truth" which makes "fellowships" secure (1.2.129).

Like Isabella, the Duke depreciates the political sphere, considering that power inevitably breeds corruption (1.3.50-54, 2.2.117-41). Isabella maintains that a strict enforcement of the laws is incompatible with the humble, penitent stance which the Christian faith values, while the Duke views with distaste a legal system which, from his point of view, merely encourages the deluded pride of officials like Angelo, and exploits the petty fears of those whom they are appointed to deter. He hopes instead to persuade the populace to transcend their self-love and immoderate sensuality by appealing to their passionate hearts and encouraging them to accept their own fragility and inconsequence. By showing that this effort simply reduces society to a "stew" of "corruption," Shakespeare implicitly argues for the prudent use of strict deterrents, which manipulate these low, but pervasive natural forces in order to support the innate need to secure lasting "fellowships."

Ironically, the Duke's philosophising itself functions as an unacknowledged means of rationalising his desire to distinguish himself through his generosity, even as it saps all other motives of their significance. Shakespeare's sardonic implication is that philosophers who depreciate the sustaining power of deep attachments, which, as the example of Juliet implies, may encourage a satisfaction which entails a genuine self-denial, are likely simply to descend into the pettiness of self-regard, even as they imagine that they are adopting a detached, panoptic view of the transience of all human endeavours.

The Duke's desire to win praise for his benevolence, which flourishes without being restrained either by codes of piety and honour or by patriotic ties, represents a real threat to the state. His apparently compassionate approach is in fact as detached as a "dream" in an "after-dinner's sleep" from the real problems of Vienna. The Duke's preferred role as an itinerant friar, who is not even a citizen of the state, let alone a ruler who is largely responsible for the decadence by which he is surrounded, allows him to dream that he is merely "a looker-on here in Vienna," and to view with gentle, contemplative pity "faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes stand like forfeits in a barber's shop, as much in mock as mark," no doubt comforted all the while by the thought that this disruption is, from the largest perspective, as transient as "an after-dinner's sleep" (5.1.315-22).^[29]

On the one hand, Angelo's secularised version of the doctrine of the Fall, in which human nature is seen as primarily sensual and self-loving, arguably comes to form one of the more corrosive elements of modern ideology, since it potentially undermines both the practice and the perception of political authority; on the other, the Duke may be seen as a forerunner of Enlightenment philosophers who, abandoning the esotericism which was favoured in the classical tradition--as the Duke does when he addresses the non-philosophical Claudio--sought to base society on reason and mutual sympathy rather than on subjection to authority, whether divine or human. ^[30] Leo Strauss notes that in the systems of Hobbes and those he influenced, which attempt to base themselves directly on natural passions, "virtue is reduced to...benevolence or kindness or 'the liberal virtues,'" while "'the severe virtues' of self-restraint lose their standing." He goes on to quote Edmund Burke's Letter to Rivarol (1791): "The Parisian philosophers...explode or render odious or contemptible, that class of virtues which restrain the appetite...In the place of all this, they substitute a virtue which they call humanity or benevolence."^[31] Shakespeare might deny that liberalism of this sort is inspired by a truly heartfelt understanding of the disciplined conditions which are required for deep attachments to thrive, and suspect that intellectuals of this sort are actually more concerned to distinguish themselves than to improve society. His overall warning is that in early modern times the self-regarding idealism of "political hedonism," to use Strauss's term, might combine with a post-Christian pessimism to undermine the stern virtues which are required for the just exercise of political authority -or even, perhaps, for the maintenance of a rigorous personal morality.

In particular, Barnadine's story can be seen as foreshadowing the way in which modern liberal states may have difficulty in reconciling ever expanding conceptions of individual rights with the need of the community as a whole to protect itself. Wilson Knight is right to note "the peculiar modernity of the Duke in point of advanced psychology," in that "the case of Barnadine troubles him intensely," although his assumption that Shakespeare approves of his delicate conscience is, I believe, mistaken.^[32] Indeed, many modern thinkers reject the very idea of retribution, since it ignores the complex causes of criminal activity, while relying on judges who, it is sometimes now assumed, are distinguished from those whom they sentence only by their superior power. From Shakespeare's point of view, which he allows Angelo to express so eloquently, this is to forget that, without sanctions, however imperfectly just, it would be impossible to impose the deterrents upon which the rule of law ultimately depends (2.1.1-26, 2.2.93-104).

Shakespeare resembles Plato rather than the philosophes in conforming outwardly to the dominant moral and religious principles of his time: even as he lays out the flaws in Christianity for those who wish to examine them, he encourages his audiences to celebrate the merciful approach of Isabella and the Duke, if they feel inclined to do so. ^[33] He agrees with Plato also on the role which noble and pious guardians might be induced to play in defending the state. However, I would argue that he differs from him on the key issue of the relationship between politics and philosophy.^[34] The corollary of Shakespeare's critique of the Duke's approach is that some philosophers, whose curiosity may naturally be regulated by their attachments, might actively wish to take on the uncongenial task of ruling out of a deep love for their country, and further, that, if they did so, would, like truly "fond fathers," expect nothing in return for their patriotism but the knowledge that they had protected "fellowships" by enforcing the laws which restrain self-love and immoderate sensuality.

---

1. All references to Measure for Measure are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997). ↩︎

2. See Stanley Rosen, Plato's "Symposium" (Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1968): 50-51, for a discussion of the Platonic view that even base desires cannot be satisfied without some degree of transcendence towards the noble. ↩︎

3. See Samuel Johnson, "Johnson on Shakespeare," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure," ed. C. K. Stead. Casebook Series (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1971): 42. ↩︎

4. John Gielgud portrayed Angelo as noble in a "suppressed and twisted way": Richard David, "Measure for Measure on the Modern Stage," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 70. There is evidence for this view even in the second half of the play. After ordering Claudio's execution, purely because he fears that the latter might subsequently take "revenge [for] so receiving a dishonor'd life," he exclaims, "Would yet he had liv'd!" (4.4.28-34). This soliloquy suggests that the Duke is being too cynical in the last scene when he attributes the "quick'ning" in Angelo's eye at the sight of Claudio merely to a perception that he himself is now "safe" from execution (5.1.494-95). ↩︎

5. This is the central point of difference between Shakespeare's political philosophy and Plato's; see the concluding section of this essay. ↩︎

6. Johnson: 42. ↩︎

7. See below for the Duke's atheism and for a fuller consideration of Shakespeare's agreements and disagreements with Plato. ↩︎

8. David L. Stevenson, "Design and Structure in Measure for Measure," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 228-30. ↩︎

9. The introduction to Dr. Lever's Arden edition of the play, quoted in W. W. Robson, "Shakespeare and his Modern Editors," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 83. ↩︎

10. Dr. Lever notes that the "call for Angelo to acknowledge his own 'natural guiltiness' is all too plainly a femina and inadvertently suggestive": quoted in Robson: 83. See also Stevenson: 225-26. ↩︎

11. Stevenson: 227. ↩︎

12. Arthur Quiller Couch, cited in W. W. Lawrence, "Shakespeare's Problem Comedies," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 123. See also Stevenson: 230. For the shadiness of the bed trick and Isabella's unexpectedly rapid compliance, see Clifford Leech, "The 'Meaning' of Measure for Measure," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 165-66. ↩︎

13. Johnson: 40. W. W. Robson correctly adduces the surprising fact that "the Friar, supposedly preparing Claudio for his reconciliation with God, makes no reference to Christ's atoning sacrifice" to suggest that the play is by no means as pious as some critics have argued: 86. ↩︎

14. Plato, Phaedo: 64a. ↩︎

15. For discussions of the Platonic understanding of self-knowledge, see Drew Hyland, The Virtue of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato's Charmides" (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1981), and Stanley Rosen, The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (London: Routledge, 1993): 98-100. ↩︎

16. Leo Strauss, "Plato," in A History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: Rand McNally College Publishing Co., 1972): 21. ↩︎

17. Shakespeare perhaps treats with some scepticism classical accounts of the courage which may be derived from a philosophical acceptance of mortality: see James H. Nichols Jr., Epicurean Political Philosophy: The "De Rerum Natura" of Lucretius (London: Cornell University Press, 1976): 165; Leo Strauss, "On Plato's 'Apology of Socrates' and 'Crito', in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983): 51-52. ↩︎

18. The Duke is tempted to see self-knowledge as "the supreme, perhaps the only, good": Wilson Knight: 118. ↩︎

19. Leech: 161-62. ↩︎

20. L. C. Knights notes that the last two acts do little to resolve what appeared to be the play's central question, which, he argues, the audience is never entirely allowed to forget: "The Ambiguity of Measure for Measure," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 146-49. ↩︎

21. See C.K Stead's introduction to Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 17. ↩︎

22. Leech: 159 ↩︎

23. A. W. Schlegel argues that Lucio's analysis of the Duke's "singularities and whims was not wholly without foundation": "A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 45. See also Leech: 159. ↩︎

24. S. T. Coleridge, "The Table Talk and Omniana of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 45. See also Swinburne, "A Study of Shakespeare," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 62-63. ↩︎

25. "As he extends a free pardon to all the guilty, we do not see how his original purpose, in committing the execution of the laws to other hands, of restoring their strictness, has in any wise been accomplished": Schlegel: 45. See also Leech: 161. ↩︎

26. Leech: 158-60. ↩︎

27. Plato's equivalent of this shift of perspective from cosmic to earthly is explored by Seth Bernadete in Socrates' Second Sailing (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989). ↩︎

28. "Measure for Measure and the Gospels," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 103, 118-19. ↩︎

29. Schlegel comments aptly that the Duke's "vanity is flattered with acting invisibly like an earthly providence; he takes more pleasure in overhearing his subjects than governing them": 44-45. See also William Hazlitt, "Characters of Shakespeare's plays," in Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure": 47-48: the Duke "is more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state; more tenacious of his own character than attentive to the feelings and apprehensions of others." ↩︎

30. Leo Strauss, "On Classical Political Philosophy," in Political Philosophy, ed. Hilail Gildin (New York: Pegasus, 1975): 72-73. ↩︎

31. Natural Right and History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983): 188; see also Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, trans. Elsa Sinclair (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996): 112-26. ↩︎

32. Knight: 98. ↩︎

33. For Plato's and Xenophon's careful accommodation of their thought to the laws of their time, see Leo Strauss, Socrates and Aristophanes (New York, Basic Bk. Inc.: 1966): 314. ↩︎

34. Contrast the view of Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, who argue that Shakespeare was simply a Platonic political philosopher: Shakespeare's Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1964): 6-8. ↩︎