SHAKSPER 2004: Question on Measure for Measure
From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@shaksper.net)
Date: 09/13/04
- Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "The Meaning of Hamlet"
- Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Henry, Earl of Richmond"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]
The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 15.1711 Monday, 13 September 2004
[1] From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Friday, 10 Sep 2004 16:28:04 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
[2] From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Friday, 10 Sep 2004 22:15:04 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[3] From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 12:40:30 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[4] From: Peter Bridgman <peter@pfjb.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 13:47:57 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[5] From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 14:00:26 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[6] From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 15:03:23 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[7] From: Bill Arnold <barnold_pb@yahoo.com>
Date: Sunday, 12 Sep 2004 17:28:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1644 Question on Measure for Measure
[8] From: Tom Krause <tkrause@cox.net>
Date: Sunday, 12 Sep 2004 22:46:34 -0400
Subj: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
[9] From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Monday, 13 Sep 2004 09:50:59 +0100
Subj: Re: SHK 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Friday, 10 Sep 2004 16:28:04 +0100
Subject: 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
Krause asks for an allegory that will pass his six tests (even though I
would argue that his own "debasement" allegory fails them
comprehensively). As I have said, I do not have either the time nor the
motivation to do this task justice. Just by looking at Krause's
footnotes, you can see that he spent a considerable chunk of his life
researching his essay and formulating his claims. If I was really to
produce a series of assumptions and claims that were to match Krause's
as an endeavour, I would have to spend just as long, which I am not
willing to do. The false allegory that I am about to make up, therefore,
is more likely to take me a few hours than weeks or months, and it
should be understood that if I - or anybody else - could be bothered to
spend as much time on this as Krause has, we could produce a much better
parallel fake-allegory.
I will start by summarising Krause's own offering. In order to compare
like with like I am only going to look at one play and one theme.
Krause's essay actually contains numerous themes jumbled up together, so
that Luke Kirby appears in Krause's "allegory" although he has nothing
to do with debasement, or Shakespeare, or the text of this play when the
name "Luke" appears. In this summary I am going to begin by listing all
those points which actually directly refer to Krause's supposed major
theme, "debasement" in one play, "Measure for Measure".
These are as follows:
1) ANGELO'S NAME AND ROLE. Krause tells us that "In 'Measure for
Measure', a character named for an English coin (Angelo, for the English
Angel) - whom others view as a model of purity - is actually debased and
at risk of becoming irredeemably debased. If the character named for a
monarch (Isabella) yields to his entreaties, both the coin and the
monarch will be debased. Fortunately, a character named for a Spanish
Jesuit who argued against monetary debasement (Mariana for Juan de
Mariana) intervenes, and prevents both from becoming debased ... The
forced marriage of the coin (Angelo) to the anti-debaser (Mariana)
reflects Shakespeare's hopes that King James will pursue a policy of
non-debasement.
2) MARIANA'S NAME AND ROLE. Krause claims that Mariana is named after
Juan de Mariana, who argued against monetary debasement, and that the
character Mariana by marrying Angelo stops him from becoming debased.
3) ISABELLA'S NAME AND ROLE. Krause claims that Isabella is named after
Queen Elizabeth I (Isabella being a foreign variation on Elizabeth), and
Krause claims that Elizabeth's role in saving the English currency from
debasement (by reversing her father's debasement) is represented by
Isabella's role in saving Angelo from debasement. He also mentions
Isabella's and Queen Elizabeth's shared virginity, suggesting that the
final marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke represents the succession of the
English throne from Elizabeth to James (although I might point out that
Isabella gets married at the end of the play, and Elizabeth rather
obviously never did, nor was James I ever one of her suitors, if
anything he was her honorary son as a result of being chosen as her heir).
4) THE DUKE. Krause claims that the Duke, as monarch, represents James
I. He suggests that Shakespeare portrayed James as having debased the
Scottish coinage (represented by allowing Angelo to take power) but then
gave the Duke the role that he hoped James would play in England
(helping to rescue the coinage from debasement). Presumably he is also
thinking about the fact that both James and the Duke were rulers.
5) CLAUDIO'S NAME AND ROLE. Krause suggests that Claudio is named after
the Claudine Emperors, and that the name was chosen because those
Emperors were associated with debasement. He also suggests that as
Isabella's brother, he represents Queen Elizabeth's brother, Edward VI -
who, like his father, debased the coinage.
6) JULIET'S NAME AND ROLE. Since Claudio does not debase Angelo,
Krause is forced to claim that Juliet also represents a coin. This he
does by noting that Juliets in other plays are referred to using coin
and 'angel' imagery more than other female characters (although I should
point out that this is repeatedly to the celestial creature and not the
coin, so Krause is presuming a double-meaning that is unlikely to be
there - I would also need to see firm evidence for Krause's claim about
the particular association between Juliets and coin-imagery before I was
convinced).
7) LAWS SLIPPED FOR X YEARS. Krause claims that this time in which the
Duke's laws were allowed to slip represents the period during which
Edward VI's coins were in circulation (fourteen years), or the period
when Henry VIII's debased coins were in circulation (nineteen years).
Shakespeare apparently makes the mistake of using both figures,
contradicting each other.
8) FIVE YEARS RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANGELO AND MARIANA. Krause suggests
that the fact that Angelo had "spoken of marriage" with Mariana five
years before marrying her represents the five years between the
introduction of debasement in Spain in 1599 and the first recorded
performance of "Measure for Measure" in 1604.
So now, I'll start putting together my own "allegory". I don't know
whether the first stirrings of this deliberately false allegory (which,
in any case, could not possibly co-exist with Krause's allegory, since
it requires the same names and characters to mean completely different
things, or have a completely different significance) rest unconsciously
with my reading of Krause's essay, as I find in rereading it that he
does himself suggest that "While the name Mariana was a plausible
woman's name, and was the adjectival form of Mary or Maria (and thus
could be associated with the virgin Mary, Catholics, Queen Mary Tudor or
Mary Queen of Scots)", but these are fairly obvious connections for any
Renaissance enthusiast to make and I had consciously forgotten this by
the time I started forming my own allegory, so any debt to Krause is
subconscious.
To begin then:
Mariana, in my allegory, is a representation of the Virgin Mary or
spiritual faith in the one true religion (which, of course, is the
Catholic religion - this play is being written by Catholic William
Shakeshafte son of Catholic John Shakespeare and those Protestants in
his audience are all heretics, who need some allegorical moralising).
Isabella, a Catholic nun (the Protestants had no nuns, Henry VIII
abolished them), represents the worldly Catholic Church, which was
virginal (all priests swore an oath of chastity) and had a religious
vocation, and in particular the Spanish Empire which led the Catholic
resistance against English Protestantism and its attempts to corrupt the
Catholic nations and their church (hence the character being named after
the Spanish queen at the time of Henry VIII's Reformation, Isabella -
England's attempts to corrupt the Catholic nations and church with their
hereticism - as seen for example in their support of Dutch Protestant
rebellion against Spain - is represented by Angelo's attempt to sexually
corrupt and compromise Isabella trying to convert her from religious
virginity to worldly whoredom - Isabella's verbal resistance and
cunning scheme represent Spain's constant military resistance to the
English and Protestant threat).
Angelo represents the heretical English nation and Englishmen - his name
being a reference to that famous reference by Pope Gregory the Great
(representing the Catholic church) on viewing pagan Englishmen in the
Italian slavemarket, who declared them - for their physical beauty -
"Not Angles, but angels" (Angelo being, like them, a pagan at heart with
the outward appearance of an angel).
Mariana's brother Frederick we can take over from Krause's essay as
Federico de Spinola but - just to show how easy it is, having found a
random name, to bind it into a theme, we will massively improve on
Krause's own explanation (Krause's only connection being that Mariana
was Spanish, Federico was working for the Spanish, and the name Isabella
was Spanish for Elizabeth - which has nothing whatever to do with
Krause's own allegorical theme of debasement) by binding Federico much
more tightly into the main theme of our own allegory, Federico in
fighting for the Spanish and the Catholic faith was a "great soldier"
for, and the protective spiritual "brother" of Catholic faith
(represented by the Virgin Mary / Mariana) who died while trying to
forcibly reconcile the English nation and the Catholic Church (since his
ultimate aim was to lead an invasion of the English nation on behalf of
Catholicism and Spain, and return England to the Church), Federico's
potential to bring about the unity of England and Catholicism (Angelo
and Mariana) is represented by the dowry that brother Frederick carries
on his ship, when the ship sinks and Frederick dies (representing
Federico's death in a sea battle), this potential unification (the dowry
to bring about the marriage) is lost, and England returns to its
intransigent hereticism, rejecting Mariana / Mary and the Catholic faith.
The "laws let slip" for fourteen years are explained by the fourteen
years between Henry VIII's illegal (by Catholic standards) remarriage
and excommunication by Pope Clement VII both in 1533 (which finally
broke off all official ties between England's monarch and the Catholic
Church) and Henry's death in 1547.
The"laws let slip" for nineteen years" refer to the nineteen years
between the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which confirmed Henry VIII
officially as the Supreme Head of the Church in England (usurping the
position of the Pope) and 1553 when Queen Mary I reinstated the Catholic
Bishops as she returned England to Catholicism.
The Duke represents Philip II, who - through marrying Mary I - was
briefly King of England and tried to guide it back to Catholicism (hence
his position as Angelo's master), upon the death of Mary I, Philip did
nothing to prevent the succession of her sister and instead tried to woo
Elizabeth with the idea of marrying her and restoring himself to the
English throne (symbolised by the Duke leaving his country -
representing England - and allowing Angelo, representing Queen Elizabeth
and the Protestant Englishmen, to rule the country), but he continued to
act secretly behind the scenes (with the Duke's return in disguise and
secret plotting to help Isabella and Mariana representing Philip II's
role in sending Spanish spies, missionary priests [including Jesuits] -
symbolised by the Duke disguising himself as just such a man, a
religious Friar - and political agitators into England to aid the
English Catholics, who are represented by Isabella and Mariana, their
worldly Catholic faith represented by Isabella and their spiritual
Catholic faith represented by Mariana) and continued to try to bring
about a reconciliation between England and the Catholic faith
(represented by the marriage of Mariana and Angelo) by diplomatic means
or by war (represented by the Duke's role in tricking Angelo into
marrying Mariana).
Since this is an allegory about the relationship between Catholicism and
England, and not one about the debasement of coinage, we can also bring
in all the examples from Krause's own essay that are actually about
Catholicism and have nothing whatever to do with debasement, while these
have nothing directly to do with Krause's debasement allegory (since not
one of them has anything to do with debasement at all), they are rather
obviously an integral part of the main theme of my allegory about the
relationship between England and Catholicism, and so we can slot them in
here with much more justification than Krause can (obviously, I might
claim if I actually believed in the allegory that I was creating, while
following his misleading "debasement" allegory, Krause accidentally
stumbled across some of the parts of the *REAL* allegory inserted in the
play by Shakeshafte, one which in its other parts flagrantly cannot
co-exist with Krause's theory and which provides a much more natural
home for the Jesuit and Catholic references that Krause thinks he has
found).
Therefore, the moated grange is Lyford Grange, which in real life was
used by the Jesuit Father Campion, and so here is the home of Mariana
(Catholic faith) because in real life it became a symbolic home of the
spiritual Catholic faith that wishes to reach out to and unite with
England, represented by Mariana with her wish to embrace and marry Angelo.
Mariana's grange is within "Saint Luke's" because this represents Luke
Kirby, who is named here in association with Mariana was trying to do
Mariana's / Mary's work in converting Angelo / England when he was
captured, tortured and martyred. He had a home for Mariana (Catholic
faith) in his heart.
Angelo's five year-old promise of marriage, followed by five years of
refusal, and then a sudden marriage, represents the five years between
the Western Rising (an English Catholic rebellion against Edward VI and
his introduction of a Protestant Prayer Book in 1549) and the date of
the marriage of Queen Mary I of England and King Philip II of Spain,
which took place in 1554. When the Western Rising occurred it some
briefly thought that this action was a promise that there would shortly
be a reunification of Catholicism and the English people (the marriage
of Angelo and Mariana) set in motion by these rebellions, but the
promise was short-lived as the rebellion was crushed and England/Angelo
- despite this brief suggestion of a possible reunification of England
with Catholicism - continued in its stubborn heretical ways until
Edward's sudden early death, which brought about a sudden and literal
marriage between the Catholic world and England, when Philip II of Spain
married Mary I, and became the joint monarch of a once again Catholic
England - a marriage of England and the Catholic world that the Catholic
Shakeshafte hoped would one day happen again, sometime after his play
was performed.
Claudio's name is easily explained by the fact that Claudius Acquavia
was General (leader) of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) from 1581
until more than a decade after "Measure for Measure" was performed. As
General of the Jesuits he was responsible for training and sending all
the missionary Jesuits into England to minister to the Catholics there.
In this allegory Claudio (named after this General) symbolises all of
the missionary Jesuits in their kindly mission to help the English to
reform from heresy and join the Catholic Church.
In the play the relationships of the Jesuits (represented by their
leader) and the loyal Catholic English people is symbolised by Claudio's
legitimate but unofficial relationship with Juliet (and we can borrow
Krause's theorising - dubious as it is - to say that Juliet was clearly
a representative of the good English person, open to forming a union and
eventually a marriage with the Catholic priesthood, since Krause tells
us that Shakeshafte routinely calls his other Juliets 'angels' and here
we know that angel really does mean the divine creature with wings [as
it clearly does in those plays] and not a coin, and the term is used, as
with Angelo, because Juliet is one of the strangely attractive pagan
English, but in this case open to Christian conversion (as Pope Gregory
the Great had hoped when he first saw them). Unfortunately the brutal
authorities of England, represented by the unjust Angelo (who outwardly
looked like an angel, as Pope Gregory observed, but had unfortunately
turned out to be inwardly a devil instead, as Shakeshafte says
repeatedly within the play) punished Claudio (the Jesuits) and Juliet
(the Catholic English people who welcomed priests and desired a union
with the Catholic priesthood and church), despite the fact that their
relationship was a legitimate one despite its secrecy and unofficial
nature. Shakespeare's association of Juliets with angels and with
English Catholics (especially pregnant ones) is doubtless additionally
suggested by the name of Saint Juliot - also known as Saint Julitta, who
was one of the last Christians martyred by the decree of pagan Roman
Emperors (Emperor Diocletian being responsible for the tenth and most
terrible persecution of the early Christian church). With her
three-month old child Cyriacus, also later made a Saint, she fled
persecution of Christians in Lyacaonia, and went from there to Isauria
to Tarsus in Cilicia, where she was finally killed during the
persecutions instigated by Diocletian, after her child had been killed
before her eyes. Shakeshafte's angelic saintly Catholic Juliets are
therefore dedicated to the memory of Saint Julitta, who like them faced
persecution by the pagan/heretical authorities of countries not friendly
to the true religion.
I've only spent a couple of hours at this and I've barely looked at any
books, just a few random flicks through reference books and glances at
the Internet, despite this I've managed to match Krause's allegory on
just about every point, and when I haven't matched it I've gone beyond
it in drawing even more allegorical detail out of Shakespeare's play
than Krause does for particular individuals and places. Even when I've
decided to co-opt Krause's arguments (the grange, "Saint Luke's",
Mariana's brother Frederick) they fit much better into my allegory than
they did into Krause's, for a start they're actually on the right
subject (Krause's allegory is about currency debasement, which none of
these three people and places had anything to do with, but mine is about
the relationship between England and Catholicism, in which all three
were intimately involved) and what's more I've shown via allegory new
things about all three references which simply are not compatible with
Krause's alternative allegory: the grange is the home to Mariana because
Lyford Grange was the English home of Catholic spirituality in its use
as a Jesuit base, I've explained why Federico de Spinola was Mariana's
brother and why he was carrying her dowry, I've shown why Mariana lives
within a place named after Luke Kirby, while Krause cannot find any way
to attach him directly to Shakespeare's text at all.
Now I'm sure that Krause will accept that there are multiple and endless
references to Catholicism, and to the relationship between Catholicism
and the English people and state, that scholars have claimed to see
(sometimes with more evidence and justification than at others) in
Shakespeare's plays. When I have a chance to get out to the library and
collect some relevant sources, I'll post at least the 10 instances that
Krause demands within "Measure for Measure" itself, and another 10
instances from various other plays. I think though, that Krause would
accept that just a few of the texts on the question of the Shakeshafte /
'Is Shakespeare Catholic?' theory would allow me to pass this section of
Krause's test.
I may have more to say later about why my allegory passes the other
tests at least as well as Krause's does, and often better, but first I
would be interested to hear Krause's reaction to this allegory? I know,
almost for certain, that he will suggest that it is nothing like as good
as his own ("true") allegory and is therefore a "false" allegory and -
unlike his own - nothing to do with Shakespeare's real intentions.
The only other reaction that I can imagine is that Krause would claim
that both allegories are true, and were intended by Shakespeare. This
is obviously not a valid argument, since it would be all but impossible
to deliberately create two overlapping but completely different
allegories of this kind in the same play, and any author who did so
would merely confuse his audiences and himself. Since Krause wishes to
imagine that Shakespeare's audience watching the play for the first and
only time instantly saw in it the allegorical model that Krause's
supposed Shakespeare wished them to see, it is inconceivable that these
audiences were expected to see multiple conflicting allegories all at
the same time. Such an experience for somebody viewing the rapid
movement of real theatre is quite simply impossible (as - in fact - is
the sort of convoluted and abstract reasoning that Krause uses to set up
many of his counter-intuitive "readings" of words, phrases, and large
sections of the text).
I would also point out that since nobody since Shakespeare's time has
seen anything like Krause's allegory in the play, Krause's belief that
the average household servant groundling would have been instantly
enlightened is far from credible. In short I cannot imagine anybody
being able to reproduce virtually any part of Krause's allegory from
their own independent research (even if you told them that "the allegory
is about debasement") without having read Krause's essay first.
Readings that are supposed to be "obvious", but which are actually
impossible for others to see independently without help, cannot be given
much credence.
Thomas Larque.
[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Friday, 10 Sep 2004 22:15:04 +0100
Subject: 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
>I like to see argument, even vigorous argument, but feel dismay when the
>contention descends into personal attacks. I don't know personally any
>of the combatants, so this is an attempt at an impartial assessment.
Bill Lloyd is quite right. I overreacted in response to Ed Taft, and as
a result unfairly allowed my feelings about Tom Krause's method to spill
over into personal comments, which was especially unjustified since Tom
Krause had no part in any provocation. I have apologised offline to Tom
Krause (although not for the reasons Ed Taft suggested that I should)
and he has been kind enough to accept my apology, and I apologise here
to Hardy and to the list. I will try to post more moderately and react
less emotionally in future.
Thomas Larque.
[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 12:40:30 +0100
Subject: 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Perhaps we ought to consider "moated grange", which is probably another
of Shakespeare's eccentricities. Strictly speaking, a grange is an
outlying farm of a monastery or feudal lord, used for the collection of
tithes or feudal dues, and so with additional barns (hence the name: it
really means 'granary'). It would be run by a steward or bailiff,
although it is not impossible that a member of the monastic community
would oversee it. It would not need to be moated, because that is a
quasi-defensive feature. "Quasi" because the feature is really one of
feudal status rather than practicality. And as an outstation, monastic
or secular, it would not have that status.
Lyford Grange was indeed moated - although it is not clear (to me, at
least) whether the moat still survived in the 1580s. It was not,
however, a grange! It did indeed belong to the Abbey of Abingdon, but
had long been let to a secular tenant - who had presumably constructed
the moat to buttress his dubious status. Baddesley Clinton is certainly
moated, but that wasn't a grange either!
John Briggs
[4]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Peter Bridgman <peter@pfjb.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 13:47:57 +0100
Subject: 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
John Briggs writes ...
>the awful lurking suspicion remains that
>Shakespeare might not have realised that
>the predominant language ought
>to be German.
The suspicion remains that WS thought Vienna was in Italy. This is the
writer after all who gave Bohemia and Milan sea coasts and didn't seem
to know that Venice has canals. WS was not taught Geography at school
and, as far as we know, never left England, so none of this should
surprise us.
And if WS was able to make such elementary (to us) howlers in his
knowledge of European geography, how likely is it then that he was aware
of arcane economic issues in foreign lands?
Tom Krause writes as though WS took the FT and the Economist. Even if
this obscure Spanish book on currency debasement had appeared before
WS's play, the book would not have been on sale in Paul's Yard for WS to
leaf through. Any books written by Jesuits were confiscated by the
authorities and burnt.
Peter Bridgman
[5]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 14:00:26 +0100
Subject: 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Tom Krause wrote:
>Playgoer 2: Wait a minute. Juan de Mariana? Is he that guy who wrote
>that history of Spain that was intended to introduce the rest of us
>Europeans to the glory of Spain?
>Playgoer 1: Yeah. And before that, he worked for the Spanish
>Inquisition. He must be about 70 years old!
Playgoer 1 would appear to be in error - Mariana seems to have had no
connection with the Spanish Inquisition (inquisitors tended to be
Dominicans), although they did plague him in his later years, as they
did anyone who wrote on theology. Mariana would have remained a
footnote in the historiography of Spain (and an even smaller footnote in
the history of economics) had it not been for his "De Rege et Regis
institutione". The only conceivable interest in England would have been
any comparison with James's "Basilikon Doron", but in France it
attracted adverse comment because its apparent defence of tyrannicide
could be seen to justify the assassination of Henri III. But that was
nothing to the storm that broke over his head in 1610 when Henri IV was
assassinated by someone who might (or might not) have been a Jesuit.
That made the Jesuits a byword for infamy, and earned Mariana his
present entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
>The Duke identifies Mariana further by reference to the "Great Soldier
>Frederick."
If Federico was indeed the younger brother, it would, of course, have
been Ambrogio who "pledged his family fortune to Spain" (Playgoer 1).
Federico's footnote in military history is due to his (ultimately
unsuccessful) daring deployment of galleys in the North Sea. One
wonders whether he was following contemporary Mediterranean practice or,
like his brother, inspired by classical authors (as was Captain
Fluellen, of course).
>As I have tried to explain to Mr. Larque, many of the items that he
>considers "trivia" are things that the debasement allegory explains, not
>things that the debasement allegory depends on (witness his incisive
>critique of my point about Claudius + Nero = Claudio).
I seem to have missed this one the first time around. Shakespeare would
have been perfectly well aware that "Claudio" was the Italian form of
"Claudius". He might conceivably have heard of his contemporary Claudio
Monteverdi - whose brother was called Giulio Cesare!
John Briggs
[6]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Briggs <john.briggs4@ntlworld.com>
Date: Saturday, 11 Sep 2004 15:03:23 +0100
Subject: 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
If anyone is actually interested in Juan de Mariana's 1609 treatise "De
monetæ mutatione" - even though it has no possible connection with
Measure for Measure - it has been translated into English (as 'A
Treatise on the Alteration of Money') and published in the Journal of
Markets & Morality, Volume 5, Number 2 (Fall 2002), pp.523-593, and is
available here:
http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2002_fall/mariana/
John Briggs
[7]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Bill Arnold <barnold_pb@yahoo.com>
Date: Sunday, 12 Sep 2004 17:28:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 15.1644 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1644 Question on Measure for Measure
Peter Bridgman writes, "Measure for Measure was written in 1603 as
Elizabeth died and James came to the throne. To English Catholics this
was a time of great hope. The new queen, Anne of Denmark, was a
Catholic convert and had promised Rome she would bring up her children
as Catholics. The powerful Earl of Northumberland had sent Thomas Percy
up to Edinburgh and had secured a promise of religious toleration from
James...Garnet's great hope was that English Catholics would soon have
the religious toleration that Protestants enjoyed in France. This is
the atmosphere in which Measure for Measure was written. At a time when
members of Catholic religious orders were banned from England, on pain
of death, Shakespeare wrote a play peopled with Franciscan monks and
nuns of St Clare. Not only is the Duke disguised as a friar, he hears
confession from prisoners and absolves them of their sins. In 1603 the
real friars (disguised as noblemen) in London were risking execution for
practicing the sacraments. Whether Shakespeare was a Catholic recusant
like his dad, or a church-papist like so many of his friends, or just a
bleeding-heart liberal like me who opposes the death penalty, we do not
know. What we do know is that he wrote a play in 1603 that is very
clearly a plea for toleration."
Well, I think you have proposed what makes clear sense, that writers
write from *inside* their times, and you probably could prove your point
if you tie it into the words of Jesus which Shakespeare clearly is
alluding to. Have you thought of the title in light of the history you
cite?
Bill Arnold
http://www.cwru.edu/affil/edis/scholars/arnold.htm
[8]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tom Krause <tkrause@cox.net>
Date: Sunday, 12 Sep 2004 22:46:34 -0400
Subject: Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: SHK 15.1701 Question on Measure for Measure
Larry Weiss writes:
"This from Krause, which he repeats a number of times:
>Isabella and the Duke play monarch roles in the debasement metaphor.
But, as your thesis postulates, wasn't the monarchical role to initiate
debasement, not forestall it?"
The proposed message is that monarchs should follow Elizabeth's example
and resist all pressure to debase the coinage.
Larry Weiss also asks:
"If "picture in little" is a coin, why would anyone pay "Forty, fifty, an
hundred ducats apiece" to acquire one, when it could be obtained for its
face value. A 100 ducat coin would hardly be "little.""
The theory is that those were the "face" values of coins, and thus a
person "selling" something worth 20 ducats in exchange for a 20-ducat
coin would in fact be "buying" the picture of the monarch for 20 ducats
of value. The fact that 20 and 40 were numbers commonly encountered in
English coinage would have clued the audience in to the fact that coins
were at issue. (The second quarto is 20, 40, 100).
The next question, as you suggest, is how to deal with the fact that a
100-ducat coin would be large. One possibility is that Shakespeare was
simply using "ducat" in a "notional" sense, as indicating what his
audience would understand as a foreign denomination, and that he didn't
intend for them to over-analyze the question of just how big a 100-ducat
coin would be. If a prop was used (e.g. Hamlet flips a coin in
Rosencrantz's face) then no further hints were necessary.
But if one goes down the path of over-analysis, an explanation for the
high face values is that the coinage has been debased. When the coinage
has been debased, previously-unthinkably-high-denomination coins may be
issued. For example, while the Scottish coinage had the same "absolute
value" as the English coinage in the 14th century, Scottish debasements
over the years resulted in a Scottish pound being worth only 1/12 of an
English pound by Shakespeare's time. As a result, James's Scottish
coinage included a 20-pound issue - a denomination that would have been
impossibly huge if in English pounds.
For what it's worth, I actually had a look at a 100-ducat coin (of the
Holy Roman Empire) of 1629 at the Smithsonian over here. It's pretty
big, but still no bigger than a typical miniature portrait.
Tom Krause
[9]-------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas Larque <thomas.larque@lineone.net>
Date: Monday, 13 Sep 2004 09:50:59 +0100
Subject: 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
Comment: Re: SHK 15.1688 Question on Measure for Measure
>1. Read chapter 4 of Eric Mallin's _Inscribing the Time: Shakespeare and
>the End of Elizabethan England_, in which Mallin demonstrates over and
>over again the similarities between the Anjou affair and the main plot
>of Twelfth Night.
Unfortunately for Taft's viewpoint, as John Briggs has pointed out
already, Mallin's work is apparently not particularly convincing to
other academics. I am having problems accessing the World Shakespeare
Bibliography at present, and may be able to access more reviews once
that becomes available again so that I can determine where reviews of
Mallin can be found, but the two reviews that I have seen to date (from
"Shakespeare Quarterly" and "Early Modern Literary Studies") are almost
identical in praising Mallin's intelligence, rhetorical powers and
historical research, but pointing out that his arguments are essentially
flawed and not at all convincing.
The EMLS review calls Mallin's book "strangely disappointing",
"scholarship ... gone to waste", implies that it shares new
historicism's "obsession with royalty and the upper aristocracy", says
it "read[s] like parody", that it is "quixotic" in trying to resurrect
historical allegory which "has for good reason gone out of fashion"
(something that suggests that Ed Taft is perhaps not as up-to-date and
on-the-cutting-edge of critical theory as he likes to think in
supporting Mallin's old fashioned attempt to resurrect allegory -
something popular in the 1920s to 1950s with writers like Lilian
Winstanley and Leslie Hotson, both of whom I have read, and who turn out
to be major sources for Mallin), Mallin's theories are "Laputan in their
misplaced ingenuity", "the evidence lacks specificity", Mallin "knows
... [but] simply chooses to ignore" information that make his claims
almost impossible (about the dates of writing of Hamlet - which happened
before the events that Mallin wishes it to be an allegory about - and
the order of writing of the Quarto 2 and Quarto 1 texts' base
manuscripts, with Mallin wishing to see Quarto 1 as an early draft and
Quarto 2 as a later version changed markedly shortly before printing,
when all the indications are - and most scholars believe - that Quarto 1
is a text based on a corruption or adaptation of a Quarto 2 style
script), Mallin's agument is "circular" and "reversible", and he has
"got himself into a hermeneutic jam". As I have been arguing in my
posts about Krause's essay, the reviewer concludes that "One gets the
feeling [from Mallin's book] that units of potential 'meaning', either
historical events or elements in a text, can be made to mean anything
one wants, the consequence is that they can end up meaning nothing.
There is no brake to such interpretive ingenuity, just because there is
no criterion of evidence that one can rely on. Thus the idea of history
as adopted by such extreme new historicists as Mallin would seem the
polar opposite of history as traditionally conceived by historians,
because the demand for rigour in the marshaling of evidence has been
abandoned".
Ed Taft certainly cannot use the escape clause in attacking the
authority of this reviewer that he uses in attacking me. While I'm only
a mature student and a well established academic theatre reviewer for
scholarly journals, the author of the EMLS review is Anthony Dawson of
the University of British Columbia, who is clearly a much more prominent
and experienced scholar than Ed Taft. Dawson's list of publications
(found in Google's cache) includes six books, editorship of Arden
Online, and 19 chapters and journal articles (only showing those from
1980 to at least 2002, so presumably this is not all that he has
written). I somehow doubt that Taft can effectively cast aspersions at
Dawson's knowledge of modern criticism, or the width of his reading, and
he certainly cannot question the factual points that Dawson makes
against Mallin's theories. In other words, if Taft is going to base his
claim for superiority on a sort of argument by authority (with Taft
casting himself as the authority and belittling me for my presumed lack
of experience and prominence), then Taft's own prominence and experience
is easily trumped by figures like Dawson. Taft's own publication record
- according to the MLA Bibliography (and not counting his unpublished
Dissertation) - consists of eight journal articles, only three in
peer-reviewed journals, a respectable but not particularly large haul
for somebody twenty-one years after achieving a Doctorate. In direct
comparison, the MLA Bibliography lists three of Dawson's books, five
book articles, and thirteen journal articles.(of which ten are
peer-reviewed). In his first twenty-one years after achieving his
Doctorate (which he received in 1969 according to Digital
Dissertations), Dawson had managed to make his mark on the MLA
Bibliography with nine journal articles (eight peer reviewed), one book
article, and one book. Of course one should judge an argument by its
merits, not by its author, but since Taft wishes to judge arguments by
the reputation and experience of their proponent (and spends
considerably more time attacking me than he does my argument), it is
worth pointing out that this method of evaluating arguments counts
against Taft every bit as much as it supports him.
The "Shakespeare Quarterly" review is similarly damning about Mallin's
method, although perhaps less blunt in its criticisms, with the reviewer
calling Mallin's work "ultimately problematical", stating that Mallin
"doesn't come up with a satisfactory answer" to "the reader's recurrent
question" about chronology, he criticsises the "unwarranted linearity in
Mallin's diagnosis", says that Mallin "reduce[s] to indistinction the
complexity of Hamlet's behaviour", points out the same errors in
Mallin's claims about the Hamlet Quartos and suggests that "Surely a
text *printed* while plauge is raging (or perhaps has recently abated)
does not thereby become contaminated in the press", accuses Mallin of
turning "inscription into icon", and with regard to Mallin's claims
about "Twelfth Night" points out that "Mallin makes no case for the
resurrection of these memories some twenty years after the fact" and
concludes that "[Mallin's] book offers no evidence that Shakespeare is
engaged in a Spenserian task", the reviewer's final summary is that "
'Inscribing the Time' is a book eminently worth reading and pondering
for its failures as well as its exhilarating successes", it is fairly
clear from the review that one of those failures - in the mind of the
reviewer - is the claim that these plays are allegories at all.
Ed Taft's argument - that because Mallin claims there are allegories in
Shakespeare, then Krause's essay must be worth printing - would be
unconvincing in any case, since Krause's allegory is evidently nothing
like those which Mallin claims to see within the plays, and Krause's
"evidence" is even more contestable and paper-thin, not nearly as
cohesive or well-developed as Mallin's theories. Even if we found
historical evidence that Mallin was entirely right about the allegory in
"Twelfth Night" this would not, could not, mean that any and all
allegory theories were thereby vindicated (such thinking would
immediately validate Oxfordianism and all brands of
anti-Stratfordianism, and most of their false conclusions). Instead
Krause and Taft would still have to argue for their theory and its
validity point by point, as Krause is apparently willing to do, but Taft
is evidently not. Taft's attempt to use Mallin as an argument by
authority to vindicate Krause's claims, however, is even more
ineffective since Mallin's own claims are clearly contentious and
unconvincing to a good number of the scholars who have read them (I
would suspect that this includes the majority of those who have read
Mallin's book), and therefore clearly Mallin's unproved hypothesis
cannot be used as evidence to support yet another even more contentious
and unconvincing theory.
>I'm afraid that the problem with Larque is that,
>while he rails at great length against modern criticism, he hasn't
>actually read much of it. That is telling, from my point of view.
I have no doubt that I read less modern criticism than Taft, but I still
read a good quantity of it. If I try to analyse Taft's reading patterns
from his postings, however, (as he has attempted to guess mine) I might
assume that Taft reads considerably less historical criticism and has
considerably less contact with the theatre and with theatrical writing
about Shakespeare than I do, and it is also fairly self-evident that he
has not read nearly so much (if any) of the work by the
anti-Stratfordians, which is a very good way of learning about the
nature of bad and invalid arguments and methods in Shakespearean
Studies, an understanding of which would have effectively inoculated
Taft against the mistake of taking seriously arguments of the kind that
Krause advances in his essay (exactly identical in form and nature to
many invalid anti-Stratfordian arguments). Taft evidently likes to
think that his own balance of reading makes him superior to me as a
Shakespearean critic. I would suggest that my own rather less
restrictive range of interests allows me to understand the context of
modern criticism rather better than Taft seems to. Those who know
nothing of the past are condemned to repeat it.
I might also add that judging from our one previous exchange that I
remember (an exchange that was cut short by my having to take a series
of examinations, so I was simply unable to reply after one particular
posting), Taft had apparently never come across the well known
Shakespearean journal "Hamlet Studies", nor a good deal of the other
modern criticism that I cited in the postings that evidently first
stoked up Taft's ire against me. Although Taft at that time angrily
dismissed the possibility that the articles that I cited even counted as
modern criticism, they were in fact articles from a good number of
established academic journals, many of them peer-reviewed, and as such
at least as well qualified to count as modern criticism as Krause's
essay, which Taft happily accepts into the pantheon of modern criticism,
a form of criticism which Taft would like to think that he champions and
I oppose (a summary of our respective views that seems vastly
oversimplified, facile, and unconvincing - but which evidently gives
Taft a feeling of his own mythological role as champion of all modern
critics, except those that he happens to disagree with).
Unless the only criteria that allows a small journal article to count as
modern criticism is the fact that it has been authorised by Ed Taft
rather than the scholars who sat on the editorial board of "Hamlet
Studies" (a lately deceased and sadly lamented publication), then I can
accuse Taft of not having read very widely in modern criticism with
exactly the same level of credibility as the other way around (I'm
afraid that Mallin's book is not exactly mainstream nor particularly
significant, and it is certainly no more representative of modern
criticism than the articles which appeared in "Hamlet Studies").
>2. Mariana was well known long before 1604-1605 as one of the leading
>intellectuals of his day. His interests were varied and deep, and those
>who knew of him knew that he had special interests in politics, the
>nation-state, Catholic theology, and money matters, especially how
>currency affects a country's economic welfare. All of this was clear to
>intellectuals and other smart people as early as 1592, when his
>collected volumes on Spain came out.
All of this seems markedly beside the point. Krause's essay assumes
that William Shakespeare (in England) could use Juan de Mariana's
surname alone as a representation of somebody who significantly opposed
the debasement of currency by governments at the time that "Measure for
Measure" was written and first performed (which happened before Mariana
published any book on debasement). This not only requires that Juan de
Mariana should have written vaguely about money at some point (what
historian has not?) but that Mariana be specifically *FAMOUS* for
writing about debasement. Even if some minor references to debasement
occurred in Mariana's great History of Spain, these are unlikely to have
been singled out by readers around the world as his main topic (which
they clearly were not). Every modern historian who writes about World
Wars I and II writes about inflationary debasement of currencies (it's
what happened between the Wars in Germany, and a major factor in setting
off the second one), but that doesn't mean that if we find a character
called Tailor (or a character who *is* a Tailor) in a modern play that
uses metaphors about counterfeited coins a few times, we can confidently
claim that the character must be an allegorical representation of A.J.P.
Taylor, who wrote quite a bit about inflationary debasement of currency,
but wasn't exactly famous for having done so (as opposed to all the
other things he did equally well).
Besides, even before we get to this point, we have to establish whether
Mariana wrote anything at all about the debasement of currencies before
"Measure for Measure" was written. Krause's essay makes it fairly clear
that, as far as Krause knows, he did not. Krause himself, in his most
recent post, mentions Alan Soons, whose Biography of Mariana suggests
that Mariana wrote a chapter about debasement in his 1599 work "De Rege"
*before* debasement was introduced by Philip III of Spain, but while
Krause seems conveniently closer to being convinced now that it is
becoming an important issue in supporting his argument ("I don't have
the resources to confirm or refute this, but it's plausible" is Krause's
latest line on this suggestion), it seems obvious that Krause was less
convinced when he originally wrote his essay, which states that
"Angelo's primary excuse for having abandoned Mariana - that Mariana's
'reputation was disvalu'd in levity' (5.1.221) - could be a complaint
that Mariana's book 'De Rege' - published in 1599 - was lighter (had
more 'levity') than it would have been had it included Mariana's
thoughts on debasement, which would not appear in print until the second
edition of 'De Rege' in 1605". Since Krause evidently has access to
sources that suggest that the chapter on debasement was only added to
the 1605 second edition of "De Rege", the most likely explanation for
Soons' claim is that Soons accidentally read a copy of the 1605 edition,
while assuming that the text it contained had originated on the date of
first publication. Clearly, therefore, if Krause wishes to make new
claims on the basis of an assumption that some 1599 editions did contain
this chapter, then he needs to produce some evidence of a 1599 edition
that did do so. Since Soons' claim is evidently dubious, it cannot be
used as firm evidence unless or until it has been confirmed.
Taft evidently accepts that there was no reference to debasement in "De
Rege" and therefore falls back on Mariana's "Historiae de rebus
Hispaniae" published in 1592. Having seen Taft's posting I am not even
sure that Taft has actually read this volume since the points that he
makes are so generalised and unspecific as to suggest that he has not.
As it happens, I have access to a 1699 English translation of Mariana's
book (provided by EEBO in a poor-quality PDF scan), and although I have
not had time to read the whole book, I have been looking specifically at
the monarchs that Mariana himself identifies as those most responsible
for inflation as the result of debasement of currency in his book "De
Monetae Mutatione" (which can be found in English translation as "A
Treatise on the Alteration of Money" at
http://www.acton.org/publicat/m_and_m/2002_fall/mariana/intro.html).
Now, when Mariana wrote his 1592 book on the History of Spain he did not
write about Philip III of Spain (the current monarch) nor about Philip
III's debasement of the Spanish gold currency, since that had not yet
taken place. Mariana's later treatise, however, makes clear that
although silver and gold had not yet been debased in Spanish History,
the copper "Maravedis" had been debased repeatedly, and their value had
consistently fallen through Spanish History. Mariana gives a list of
the value of the maravedis at significant points in Spanish History and
makes clear that the biggest fall in its value took place during the
reigns of Henry II, John I, Henry III, and John II of Castile (all of
whom followed one another to the throne). Rather obviously if we find
any references to the debasement of currency in Mariana's History of
Spain, then, it should appear in the histories of these particular
monarchs. I am gradually reading through these sections of the Book,
which form a substantial part of Mariana's whole work, and will report
back honestly on any references to debasement that I find. To date I
have finished reading the history of Henry II, and the only reference of
any sort that could possibly be related to the debasement of currency is
a one-sentence throw-away line reading "A certain sort of base money
called Agnus Dei's was here regulated how it should pass". Now Mariana
was certainly not going to become famous around the world as an opponent
of debasement on the basis of a single sentence in several densely
packed chapters, and if debasement has a similarly marginal presence in
the rest of Mariana's work, then we can be fairly certain that nobody in
Spain, let alone in England, would have thought of him in relation to
this topic as a result of his writings until well after "Measure for
Measure" had been written and performed, at which time Mariana finally
released a whole book on this topic. Unfortunately for Krause and Taft,
this would have been far too late to have influenced Shakespeare's play.
Krause offers one alternative to Mariana talking famously about
debasement in one of his published books before "Measure for Measure"
was written, and that is a sort of assumption that Mariana wrote or said
something on the subject which has not survived to the present day, but
which was safely passed around the Renaissance world from Spain to
Shakespeare in London. It should be fairly obvious that no serious
academic theory could base its central argument on such a fantastical
creation, since any academic world that allowed such phantom creations
to act as "proof" of a theory would allow us to make up just about
anything and claim it as fact. Since Krause is trying to give us some
reason for believing that it is even a notional possibility that
Shakespeare used Mariana as an allegorical figure to represent
debasement, he cannot use Shakespeare's use of the name 'Mariana'
(rather obviously best known as a straightforward girl's name) as his
only evidence that Juan de Mariana had created that theory and was
already famous for it at that time: this is circular reasoning and is
wholly invalid. As Anthony Dawson suggested in relation to Mallin, if
Literature scholars want to make arguments based on history than they
must stick to the firm standards established by historians, or else
"historical events or elements in a text, can be made to mean anything
one wants, [and] the consequence is that they can end up meaning
nothing. There is no brake to such interpretive ingenuity, just because
there is no criterion of evidence that one can rely on. Thus the idea
of history as adopted by such extreme new historicists as Mallin would
seem the polar opposite of history as traditionally conceived by
historians, because the demand for rigour in the marshalling of evidence
has been abandoned". No serious historian would be likely to accept the
phantom book or event that Krause wishes to create in order to justify
his time-travelling thrusting of Mariana's opinions and reputation
(which developed after his 1605 publication of "De Monatae Mutatione")
backward in time far enough to allow it to be one of the major sources
of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure". That Ed Taft is willing to try
to justify such a tactic suggests that Taft, similarly, is not willing
to follow the historical standards set by real historians (rather than
would-be Literary scholars playing at being historians). This by itself
is enough to leave Krause's theory without any credibility at all.
Thomas Larque.
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
- Next message: Hardy M. Cook: "The Meaning of Hamlet"
- Previous message: Hardy M. Cook: "Henry, Earl of Richmond"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ]
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |