Shakespeare is a master of suspense, when he wants to be, or isn't he always? A Duke of Vienna leaves his city and his deputy, Angelo (what a name for a twisted mind) in charge. But he comes back in disguise to check upon Angelo and he finds out that the man is corrupt and uses power to his own advantage, even trying to seduce a nun by sending her brother to the block where he would be beheaded at the strange time of four o'clock in the morning. But the Duke prevents the execution of that brother Claudio and comes back in time afterwards to sort things out. Shakespeare is a master at making us believe it will not go through and every step to the truth is immediately countered with two steps down the abyss, till the very last moment when the deputy is completely fooled out of countenance by the Duke coming back under his disguise – as a monk mind you – and reveals the villainy of his deputy when this deputy orders the Duke disguised as a monk to be sent to prison pending execution. Though everything looks really bleak till the end of the fourth act, the fifth act brings some relief but at the end of it only, though Shakespeare brilliantly prepares it with Isabella's cry for justice: "Justice, O royal Duke! Vail your regard / Upon a wrong'd- I would fain have said a maid! / O worthy Prince, dishonour not your eye / By throwing it on any other object / Till you have heard me in my true complaint, / And given me justice, justice, justice, justice." An opening single cry first and then a closing quadruple cry, which brings these "justice" cries to five: the diabolical disruptive pentacle, that the Duke double further on, along with Isabella, to ten to make the truth stronger, more unavoidable, with six words on each side and five identical making the sixth one all the more powerful. "Duke: Nay, it is ten times strange? / Isabella: Nay, it is ten times true." And the truth of a well balanced decision will come from the Duke, this time like a final decree: "Duke: 'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!' / Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; / Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure. / Then, Angelo, thy fault's thus manifested, / Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage. / We do condemn thee to the very block / Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste. / Away with him!" But Shakespeare being Shakespeare he manages to sort things out in a final ruling, as square a ruling as square can be. Mariana is married to Angelo and she is the happiest woman when Angelo is pardoned and escapes the block. Isabella is reunited to her brother Claudio. Lucio's slandering against the Duke sends him at first to prison to be whipped and then hanged, because he had called the Duke "a fool, a coward, one all of luxury, an ass and a madman", a diabolical pentacle of insults, but the Duke yields to popular demand and pardons the slandering provided he marries a prostitute this very Lucio had mishandled, which is equal to death in Lucio's words: "Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, / whipping, and hanging" which is another formal square though "marrying" is equaled to the three others: "pressing to death", "whipping", "hanging". And finally the Duke is moving towards his own marriage with Isabella. Four couples are reunited, even if one is brother and sister and another is a slanderer and a prostitute. And three marriages in that square ending. This production adds a detail at the end that does not seem to be in the tale which is the coming to the forefront of a woman and a newborn baby that is at once acknowledged by Claudio which makes a fourth real marriage, but I would have preferred the Shakespearian ending that is somewhere slightly awry and hence a big tongue in a big cheek like the final ternary speech of the Shrew when finally tamed into marriage and obedience.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID