Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

Автор книги: William Shakespeare

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 157 (всего у книги 250 страниц)

MEASURE FOR MEASURE

BY SHAKESPEARE, ADAPTED BY THOMAS MIDDLETON

Measure for Measure, first printed in the 1623 Folio, was performed at court on 26 December 1604. Plague had caused London’s theatres to be closed from May 1603 to April 1604; the play was probably written and first acted during this period. Dislocations and other features of the text as printed suggest that it may have undergone adaptation after Shakespeare’s death. Someone—perhaps Thomas Middleton, to judge by the style—seems to have supplied a new, seedy opening to Act I, Scene 2; and an adapter seems also to have altered 3.1. 517-4.1.63 by transposing the Duke’s two soliloquies, by introducing a stanza from a popular song, and supplying dialogue to follow it, and by adding other short passages. We print the text in what we believe to be its adapted form; a conjectured reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original version of the adapted sections is given in the Additional Passages.

The story of a woman who, in seeking to save the life of a male relative, arouses the lust of a man in authority was an ancient one that reached literary form in the mid sixteenth century. Shakespeare may have known the prose version in Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi’s Gli Ecatommiti (1565, translated into French in 1583) and the same author’s play Epitia (1573, published in 1583), but his main source was George Whetstone’s unsuccessful, unperformed two-part tragicomedy Promos and Cassandra, published in 1578.

Shakespeare’s title comes from St Matthew’s account of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount: ‘with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again’. The title is not expressive of the play’s morality, but it alerts the spectator to Shakespeare’s exploration of moral issues. His heroine, Isabella, is not merely, as in Whetstone, a virtuous young maiden: she is about to enter a nunnery. Her brother, Claudio, has not, as in Whetstone, been accused (however unjustly) of rape: his union with the girl (Juliet) he has made pregnant has been ratified by a betrothal ceremony, and lacks only the church’s formal blessing. So Angelo, deputizing for the absent Duke of Vienna, seems peculiarly harsh in attempting to enforce the city’s laws against fornication by insisting on Claudio’s execution; and Angelo’s hypocrisy in demanding Isabella’s chastity in return for her brother’s life seems correspondingly greater. By adding the character of Mariana, to whom Angelo himself had once been betrothed, and by employing the traditional motif of the ‘bed-trick’, by which Mariana substitutes for Isabella in Angelo’s bed, Shakespeare permits Isabella both to retain her virtue and to forgive Angelo without marrying him.

Although Measure for Measure, like The Merchant of Venice, is much concerned with justice and mercy, its more explicit concern with sex and death along with the intense emotional reality, at least in the earlier part of the play, of its portrayal of Angelo, Isabella, and Claudio, creates a deeper seriousness of tone which takes it out of the world of romantic comedy into that of tragicomedy or, as the twentieth-century label has it, ‘problem play’. Its low-life characters inhabit a diseased world of brothels and prisons, but there is a life-enhancing quality in their frank acknowledgement of sexuality; and the Duke’s manipulation of events casts a tinge of romance over the play’s later scenes.

Measure for Measure’s subtle and passionate exploration of issues of sexual morality, of the uses and abuses of power, gave it a special appeal in the later part of the twentieth century. Each of the ‘good’ characters fails in some respect; none of the ‘bad’ ones lacks some redeeming quality; all are, in the last analysis, ‘desperately mortal’ (4.2.148).

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Vincentio, the DUKE of Vienna

ANGELO, appointed his deputy

ESCALUS, an old lord, appointed Angelo’s secondary

CLAUDIO, a young gentleman

JULIET, betrothed to Claudio

ISABELLA, Claudio’s sister, novice to a sisterhood of nuns

LUCIO, ‘a fantastic’

Two other such GENTLEMEN

FROTH, a foolish gentleman

MISTRESS OVERDONE, a bawd

POMPEY, her clownish servant

A PROVOST

ELBOW, a simple constable

A JUSTICE

ABHORSON, an executioner

BARNARDINE, a dissolute condemned prisoner

MARIANA, betrothed to Angelo

A BOY, attendant on Mariana

FRIAR PETER

FRANCESCA, a nun

VARRIUS, a lord, friend to the Duke

Lords, officers, citizens, servants

Measure for Measure

1.1 Enter the Duke, Escalus, and other lords DUKE Escalus.

ESCALUS My lord.

DUKE

Of government the properties to unfold

Would seem in me t’affect speech and discourse,

Since I am put to know that your own science

Exceeds in that the lists of all advice

My strength can give you. Then no more remains

But this: to your sufficiency, as your worth is able,

And let them work. The nature of our people,

Our city’s institutions and the terms

For common justice, you’re as pregnant in

As art and practice hath enriched any

That we remember.

He gives Escalus papers

There is our commission,

From which we would not have you warp.

(To a lord) Call hither,

I say bid come before us, Angelo. Exit lord

(To Escalus) What figure of us think you he will

bear?—

For you must know we have with special soul

Elected him our absence to supply,

Lent him our terror, dressed him with our love,

And given his deputation all the organs

Of our own power. What think you of it?

ESCALUS

If any in Vienna be of worth

To undergo such ample grace and honour,

It is Lord Angelo.

Enter Angelo

DUKE

Look where he comes.

ANGELO

Always obedient to your grace’s will,

I come to know your pleasure.

DUKE

Angelo,

There is a kind of character in thy life

That to th‘observer doth thy history

Fully unfold. Thyself and thy belongings

Are not thine own so proper as to waste

Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.

Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues

Did not go forth of us, ’twere all alike

As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched

But to fine issues; nor nature never lends

The smallest scruple of her excellence

But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines

Herself the glory of a creditor,

Both thanks and use. But 1 do bend my speech

To one that can my part in him advertise.

Hold therefore, Angelo.

In our remove be thou at full ourself.

Mortality and mercy in Vienna

Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus,

Though first in question, is thy secondary.

Take thy commission.

ANGELO

Now good my lord,

Let there be some more test made of my metal

Before so noble and so great a figure

Be stamped upon it.

DUKE No more evasion.

We have with leavened and prepared choice

Proceeded to you; therefore take your honours.

⌈Angelo takes his commission⌉

Our haste from hence is of so quick condition

That it prefers itself, and leaves unquestioned

Matters of needful value. We shall write to you

As time and our concernings shall importune,

How it goes with us; and do look to know

What doth befall you here. So fare you well.

To th’ hopeful execution do I leave you

Of your commissions.

ANGELO

Yet give leave, my lord,

That we may bring you something on the way.

DUKE My haste may not admit it;

Nor need you, on mine honour, have to do

With any scruple. Your scope is as mine own,

So to enforce or qualify the laws

As to your soul seems good. Give me your hand.

I’ll privily away. I love the people,

But do not like to stage me to their eyes.

Though it do well, I do not relish well

Their loud applause and aves vehement;

Nor do I think the man of safe discretion

That does affect it. Once more, fare you well.

ANGELO

The heavens give safety to your purposes!

ESCALUS

Lead forth and bring you back in happiness!

DUKE I thank you. Fare you well.

Exit

ESCALUS

I shall desire you, sir, to give me leave

To have free speech with you; and it concerns me

To look into the bottom of my place.

A power I have, but of what strength and nature

I am not yet instructed.

ANGELO

’Tis so with me. Let us withdraw together,

And we may soon our satisfaction have

Touching that point.

ESCALUS

I’ll wait upon your honour.

Exeunt

1.2 Enter Lucio, and two other Gentlemen

LUCIO If the Duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then, all the dukes fall upon the King.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!

SECOND GENTLEMAN Amen.

LUCIO Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table.

SECOND GENTLEMAN ‘Thou shalt not steal’?

LUCIO Ay, that he razed.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Why, ’twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions: they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all that in the thanksgiving before meat do relish the petition well that prays for peace. 16

SECOND GENTLEMAN I never heard any soldier dislike it.

LUCIO I believe thee, for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

SECOND GENTLEMAN No? A dozen times at least. 20

FIRST GENTLEMAN What, in metre?

LUCIO In any proportion, or in any language.

FIRST GENTLEMAN I think, or in any religion.

LUCIO Ay, why not? Grace is grace despite of all controversy; as for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain despite of all grace.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Well, there went but a pair of shears between us.

LUCIO I grant—as there may between the lists and the velvet. Thou art the list.

FIRST GENTLEMAN And thou the velvet. Thou art good velvet, thou’rt a three-piled piece, I warrant thee. I had as lief be a list of an English kersey as be piled as thou art pilled, for a French velvet. Do I speak feelingly now?

LUCIO I think thou dost, and indeed with most painful feeling of thy speech. I will out of thine own confession learn to begin thy health, but whilst I live forget to drink after thee.

FIRST GENTLEMAN I think I have done myself wrong, have I not? 40

SECOND GENTLEMAN Yes, that thou hast, whether thou art tainted or free.

Enter Mistress Overdone

LUCIO Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes! I have purchased as many diseases under her roof as come to—45

SECOND GENTLEMAN To what, I pray?

LUCIO Judge.

SECOND GENTLEMAN To three thousand dolours a year?

FIRST GENTLEMAN Ay, and more.

LUCIO A French crown more.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Thou art always figuring diseases in me, but thou art full of error—I am sound.

LUCIO Nay not, as one would say, healthy, but so sound as things that are hollow—thy bones are hollow, impiety has made a feast of thee.

FIRST GENTLEMAN (to Mistress Overdone) How now, which of your hips has the most profound sciatica?

MISTRESS OVERDONE Well, well! There’s one yonder arrested and carried to prison was worth five thousand of you all.

SECOND GENTLEMAN Who’s that, I pray thee?

MISTRESS OVERDONE Marry sir, that’s Claudio, Signor Claudio.

FIRST GENTLEMAN Claudio to prison? ’Tis not so.

MISTRESS OVERDONE Nay, but I know ’tis so. I saw him arrested, saw him carried away; and, which is more, within these three days his head to be chopped off.

LUCIO But after all this fooling, I would not have it so. Art thou sure of this?

MISTRESS OVERDONE I am too sure of it, and it is for getting Madame Julietta with child.

LUCIO Believe me, this may be. He promised to meet me two hours since and he was ever precise in promise-keeping.

SECOND GENTLEMAN Besides, you know, it draws something near to the speech we had to such a purpose.

FIRST GENTLEMAN But most of all agreeing with the proclamation.

LUCIO Away; let’s go learn the truth of it.

Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen

MISTRESS OVERDONE Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

Enter Pompey

How now, what’s the news with you?

POMPEY You have not heard of the proclamation, have you?

MISTRESS OVERDONE What proclamation, man?

POMPEY All houses in the suburbs of Vienna must be plucked down.

MISTRESS OVERDONE And what shall become of those in the city?

POMPEY They shall stand for seed. They had gone down too, but that a wise burgher put in for them.

MISTRESS OVERDONE But shall all our houses of resort in the suburbs be pulled down?

POMPEY To the ground, mistress.

MISTRESS OVERDONE Why, here’s a change indeed in the commonwealth. What shall become of me?

POMPEY Come, fear not you. Good counsellors lack no clients. Though you change your place, you need not change your trade. I’ll be your tapster still. Courage, there will be pity taken on you. You that have worn your eyes almost out in the service, you will be considered.

⌈A noise within⌉

MISTRESS OVERDONE What’s to do here, Thomas Tapster?

Let’s withdraw!

Enter the Provost, Claudio, Juliet, and officers; Lucio and the two Gentlemen

POMPEY Here comes Signor Claudio, led by the Provost to prison; and there’s Madame Juliet.

Exeunt Mistress Overdone and Pompey

CLAUDIO (to the Provost)

Fellow, why dost thou show me thus to th’ world?

Bear me to prison, where I am committed.

PROVOST

I do it not in evil disposition,

But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

CLAUDIO

Thus can the demigod Authority

Make us pay down for our offence, by weight,

The bonds of heaven. On whom it will, it will;

On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.

LUCIO

Why, how now, Claudio? Whence comes this

restraint?

CLAUDIO

From too much liberty, my Lucio, 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 raven down their proper bane,

A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die.

LUCIO If I could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for certain of my creditors. And yet, to say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. What’s thy offence, Claudio?

CLAUDIO

What but to speak of would offend again.

LUCIO

What, is’t murder?

CLAUDIO

No.

LUCIO

Lechery?

CLAUDIO Call it so.

PROVOST Away, sir; you must go.

CLAUDIO

One word, good friend.

⌈The Provost shows assent⌉

Lucio, a word with you.

LUCIO A hundred, if they’ll do you any good.

⌈Claudio and Lucio speak apart⌉

Is lechery so looked after?

CLAUDIO

Thus stands it with me. Upon a true contract,

I got possession of Julietta’s bed.

You know the lady; she is fast my wife,

Save that we do the denunciation lack

Of outward order. This we came not to

Only for propagation of a dower

Remaining in the coffer of her friends,

From whom we thought it meet to hide our love

Till time had made them for us. But it chances

The stealth of our most mutual entertainment

With character too gross is writ on Juliet.

LUCIO

With child, perhaps?

CLAUDIO

Unhapp’ly even so.

And the new deputy now for the Duke—

Whether it be the fault and glimpse of newness,

Or whether that the body public be

A horse whereon the governor doth ride,

Who, newly in the seat, that it may know

He can command, lets it straight feel the spur—

Whether the tyranny be in his place,

Or in his eminence that fills it up—

I stagger in. But this new governor

Awakes me all the enrolled penalties

Which have, like unscoured armour, hung by th’ wall

So long that fourteen zodiacs have gone round,

And none of them been worn; and, for a name,

Now puts the drowsy and neglected act

Freshly on me. ’Tis surely for a name.

LUCIO I warrant it is; and thy head stands so tickle on thy shoulders that a milkmaid, if she be in love, may sigh it off. Send after the Duke, and appeal to him.

CLAUDIO

I have done so, but he’s not to be found.

I prithee, Lucio, do me this kind service.

This day my sister should the cloister enter,

And there receive her approbation.

Acquaint her with the danger of my state.

Implore her in my voice that she make friends

To the strict deputy. Bid herself assay him.

I have great hope in that, for in her youth

There is a prone and speechless dialect

Such as move men; beside, she hath prosperous art

When she will play with reason and discourse,

And well she can persuade.

LUCIO I pray she may—as well for the encouragement of thy like, which else would stand under grievous imposition, as for the enjoying of thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack. I’ll to her.

CLAUDIO I thank you, good friend Lucio.

LUCIO Within two hours.

CLAUDIO Come, officer; away.

Exeunt ⌈Lucio and gentlemen at one door;

Claudio, Juliet, Provost, and officers at another⌉

1.3 Enter the Duke and a Friar

DUKE

No, holy father, throw away that thought.

Believe not that the dribbling dart of love

Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee

To give me secret harbour hath a purpose

More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends

Of burning youth.

FRIAR

May your grace speak of it?

DUKE

My holy sir, none better knows than you

How I have ever loved the life removed,

And held in idle price to haunt assemblies

Where youth and cost a witless bravery keeps.

I have delivered to Lord Angelo—

A man of stricture and firm abstinence—

My absolute power and place here in Vienna;

And he supposes me travelled to Poland—

For so I have strewed it in the common ear,

And so it is received. Now, pious sir,

You will demand of me why I do this.

FRIAR Gladly, my lord.

DUKE

We have strict statutes and most biting laws,

The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,

Which for this fourteen years we have let slip;

Even like an o‘ergrown lion in a cave

That goes not out to prey. Now, as fond fathers,

Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch

Only to stick it in their children’s sight

For terror, not to use, in time the rod

More mocked becomes than feared: so our decrees,

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;

And Liberty plucks Justice by the nose,

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart

Goes all decorum.

FRIAR

It rested in your grace

To unloose this tied-up Justice when you pleased,

And it in you more dreadful would have seemed

Than in Lord Angelo.

DUKE

I do fear, too dreadful.

Sith ‘twas my fault to give the people scope,

’Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them

For what I bid them do—for we bid this be done

When evil deeds have their permissive pass,

And not the punishment. Therefore indeed, my father,

I have on Angelo imposed the office,

Who may in th‘ambush of my name strike home,

And yet my nature never in the fight

T’allow in slander. And to behold his sway,

I will as ’twere a brother of your order

Visit both prince and people. Therefore, I prithee,

Supply me with the habit, and instruct me

How I may formally in person bear

Like a true friar. More reasons for this action

At our more leisure shall I render you.

Only this one: Lord Angelo is precise,

Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses

That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see

If power change purpose, what our seemers be.

Exeunt

1.4 Enter Isabella, and Francesca, a nun

ISABELLA

And have you nuns no farther privileges?

FRANCESCA Are not these large enough?

ISABELLA

Yes, truly. I speak not as desiring more,

But rather wishing a more strict restraint

Upon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.

LUCIO (within)

Ho, peace be in this place!

ISABELLA ⌈to Francesca⌉

Who’s that which calls?

FRANCESCA

It is a man’s voice. Gentle Isabella.

Turn you the key, and know his business of him.

You may, I may not; you are yet unsworn.

When you have vowed, you must not speak with men

But in the presence of the prioress.

Then if you speak, you must not show your face;

Or if you show your face, you must not speak.

Lucio calls within

He calls again. I pray you answer him.

⌈She stands asidel⌉

ISABELLA

Peace and prosperity! Who is’t that calls?

She opens the door.

Enter Lucio

LUCIO

Hail, virgin, if you be—as those cheek-roses

Proclaim you are no less. Can you so stead me

As bring me to the sight of Isabella,

A novice of this place, and the fair sister

To her unhappy brother Claudio?

ISABELLA

Why her unhappy brother? Let me ask,

The rather for I now must make you know

I am that Isabella, and his sister.

LUCIO

Gentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you.

Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.

ISABELLA Woe me! For what?

LUCIO

For that which, if myself might be his judge,

He should receive his punishment in thanks.

He hath got his friend with child.

ISABELLA

Sir,

make me not your story.

LUCIO

‘Tis true. I would not—though ’tis my familiar sin

With maids to seem the lapwing, and to jest

Tongue far from heart—play with all virgins so.

I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted

By your renouncement, an immortal spirit,

And to be talked with in sincerity

As with a saint.

ISABELLA

You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.

LUCIO

Do not believe it. Fewness and truth, ’tis thus:

Your brother and his lover have embraced.

As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time

That from the seedness the bare fallow brings

To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb

Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.

ISABELLA

Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet?

LUCIO Is she your cousin?

ISABELLA

Adoptedly, as schoolmaids change their names

By vain though apt affection.

LUCIO

She it is.

ISABELLA

O, let him marry her!

LUCIO

This is the point.

The Duke is very strangely gone from hence;

Bore many gentlemen—mysetf being one—

In hand and hope of action; but we do learn,

By those that know the very nerves of state,

His giving out were of an infinite distance

From his true-meant design. Upon his place,

And with full line of his authority,

Governs Lord Angelo—a man whose blood

Is very snow-broth; one who never feels

The wanton stings and motions of the sense,

But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge

With profits of the mind, study, and fast.

He, to give fear to use and liberty,

Which have for long run by the hideous law

As mice by lions, hath picked out an act

Under whose heavy sense your brother’s life

Falls into forfeit. He arrests him on it,

And follows close the rigour of the statute

To make him an example. All hope is gone,

Unless you have the grace by your fair prayer

To soften Angelo. And that’s my pith

Of business ’twixt you and your poor brother.

ISABELLA

Doth he so seek his life?

LUCIO

Has censured him already,

And, as I hear, the Provost hath a warrant

For’s execution.

ISABELLA

Alas, what poor

Ability’s in me to do him good?

LUCIO Assay the power you have.

ISABELLA My power? Alas, I doubt.

LUCIO Our doubts are traitors,

And makes us lose the good we oft might win,

By fearing to attempt. Go to Lord Angelo;

And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,

Men give like gods, but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.

ISABELLA

I’ll see what I can do.

LUCIO

But speedily.

ISABELLA I will about it straight,

No longer staying but to give the Mother

Notice of my affair. I humbly thank you.

Commend me to my brother. Soon at night

I’ll send him certain word of my success.

LUCIO

I take my leave of you.

ISABELLA

Good sir, adieu.

Exeunt ⌈Isabella and Francesca at one door,

Lucio at another door⌉