Comment on one or several of the following. I’m not looking for or thinking of anything in particular. I just cannot help but notice these connections and symmetries, and I find them striking for reasons I do not fully comprehend at present. Help?
This is Lucio’s epithet for Duke Vincentio (4.3.147). Why do you suppose he calls him this? Is it an apt description of the Duke? If so, why?
Disguised as a friar, Vincentio has been operating behind the scenes from the very start. What, exactly, is his motive? Do we know? He tells us early on that he regrets having neglected his duties as magistrate, particularly the enforcement of laws governing sexual behavior. But if that is the case, why not just start enforcing them? Why bring in Angelo and Escalus, and then surveil their actions from behind monastic disguise, a friar’s cloak and hood? And if Claudio can be lawfully executed for having sex with Julietta without having married her publicly, how is it okay for Marianna to sleep with Angelo under similar circumstances? What, in short, is the point of this whole charade?
Perhaps the play’s title provides an answer?
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
(Matthew 7:1-2)
This scriptural passage suggests a simple solution: that the play is a fable or allegory that dramatizes the otherwise abstract problem of Christian mercy versus justice. If so, then to ask about the Duke’s motives is to ask the wrong question. The question is not, “How do we explain the Duke as a human character?” but rather, “What is the play’s answer to the problem of justice in a Christian moral universe?”
Does the play provide a satisfactory answer? Does it manage in the end to balance the two imperatives of mercy and justice?
When the Provost reads aloud the letter (4.2.111-17) revealing Angelo’s failure to honor his end of the bargain (Claudio’s life for Isabella’s chastity), the deus ex machina Duke of dark corners once again posits a solution: substitute the head of a convicted criminal (Barnardine) for that of the innocent(?) Claudio, and thereby trick Angelo into thinking that the sentence has been carried out. Again, one wonders, why? For what purpose? Why not just intervene at this point and call Angelo to account, which is exactly what happens in the end? Why prolong the meting out of true justice?
Note, moreover, the Duke’s willingness to let Isabella believe that her brother has
been executed. Why keep her in the dark about this? The Duke’s answer:
I will keep her ignorant of her good
To make her heavenly
comforts of despair
When it is least expected.
(4.3.101-103)
Really? His purpose is to give her joy by first letting her believe the
worst, then revealing that Claudio lives? Why?
If the Duke’s point is to stage the virtues of acceptance, surrender, and mercy by manipulating the other characters into performing his drama, it is Barnardine who throws a wrench into the machine and gums up the works. Summoned to play his role, he simply refuses. Look at his response when summoned by Abhorson, the executioner: “You rogue, I have been drinkiing all night, I am not fitted for’t” (4.3.36-37). And when the Duke/Friar steps forward to administer the last rites, to “advise you, comfort you, and pray with you” (44-45), Barnardine will have none of it. “I will not consent to die this day, that’s certain” is his direct and dismissive reply. “But hear you —” the Duke implores him, only to be interrupted and silenced with a curt “Not a word” (53-54). What is the drunken and unrepentant degenerate’s reply to the friar-Duke? “Shutup, I refuse to hear.”
Let us consider what is happening here in the context of early modern executions. The institutions temporal and divine, the state and the church combined in the person of the Duke/friar, would stage the meting out of justice combined with the application of mercy through the last rites. When all goes to plan, the accused acknowledges his crimes, repents, and receives mercy and the gift of eternal life just prior to surrendering his biological life in the interest of justice. Measure for measure, the lex talionis or ancient “law of retaliation,” will have been satisfied even as the gift of mercy and grace (unmerited favor) is extended to all who would accept it, Barnardine included.
Amazingly, Barnardine is spared. Rather than send him to his death, his sins upon his head, the Duke observes that because Barnardine is “A creature unprepared, unmeet for death,” it would be “damnable” to “transport him in the mind he is” (59-61). Damnable for whom? Does the Duke mean that Barnardine’s insufficiently prepared soul would suffer eternal damnation? Or rather, might it be damning to the state to put such a man to death?
The decision to “Omit / This reprobate until he were well inclined” (65-66) means that another substitute (a substitute for a substitute?) must be found. Enter Ragusine, a pirate, a character we never see—and one who presumably cooperates with the divinely inflected state apparatus of criminal execution.
All this fuss and effort for what? For a tryst between Claudio and Julietta, what Lucio called “a game of tick-tack” (1.2.167)?
Like Act 3, the play’s final Act is one long scene. Here, the Duke’s experiment in the administration of justice in a Christian state yields its results. Assuming that the play is a kind of Christian allegory: does the Duke succeed in staging a rapprochement between the poles of justice and mercy?
First, comment on one or several of the following passages:
In keeping with generic convention, this comedy concludes with several marriages, every Jack (to paraphrase Robin Goodfellow) having his Jill: Claudio and Julietta; Angelo and Mariana; Lucio and his “punk”; the Duke and Isabella.
Comment on these pairings. To what extent are they satisfyingly comedic (comedic in the sense of resolving the play’s problems and the characters’ adversities?
Note, finally, two conspicuous silences. First, to the Duke’s proposal, Isabella does not respond. In a production I saw some years ago at Stratford in Ontario, the play concluded with the silent Isabella stepping forward and gesturing as if to speak just as the house lights fell and the theater went dark. What are we to make of this silence?
And what, finally, might we say of Barnardine’s silence? He, like Angelo, is granted clemency, but does not say anything in response—not even a thank you. Comments?
©Robert Whalen, 2025