Shakespeare Uncovered: Measure for Measure
I just watched the Shakespeare Uncovered episode about Measure for Measure, with Romola Garai, who was a perfect host (I remain gutted that I couldn't see her as Isabella, although it sounds like the shock-value stuff in the production - blow-up sex dolls? really? - might have driven me up a wall). This season of Shakespeare Uncovered has so far been a lot less rage-inducing than the previous ones, for the simple reason that they show more of the darn performances. I enjoyed it, but towards the end, Jonathan Bate made this goofy comment about how Measure is surely Shakespeare's goodbye to comedy or whatever, and people are always saying this about totally different plays (THEY CAN'T ALL BE HIS GOODBYE TO COMEDY, PEOPLE), and it makes me see spots. So I am slightly miffed about this. Just let the man write comedies! Stop trying to save him from being tainted by the genre!
But anyway, Jade Anouka was Isabella in the episode (in the bits where they have Globe regulars perform bits of text; maybe one day I will actually get to see her in a whole part, that would be cool), and I learned a thing from her performance: the appalled start she gave when Claudio said, "Ay, but to die, and to go we know not where" reminded me, or made me aware, of the other gulf between her and her brother in this moment, not just the one where he wants her to do something terrible to save his life. It's a startling thing for him to say in any case - though less so to us, maybe, because Hamlet's "To be or not to be" intervenes with its "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns" (though Claudio's speech is weirdly bleaker, because Hamlet - being Hamlet, our pensive prince - is more afraid of the not-knowing than the destination, whereas Claudio is terrified of the pain and suffering to come, in a way that suggests he can't imagine any other outcome). But it's all the more startling for him to say it to a sister who has chosen to become a nun, to devote herself to God: she lives in a world of fierce and shining clarity, one that encompasses a certainty about heaven and hell; this is part of why she cannot trade her chastity for her brother's life, because she is adamant that the cost would be her soul, her eternal life. (Incidentally: I could scream forever about the way people so casually try to pathologize Isabella for making that choice, like in the NYT review I read just this week of the Cheek By Jowl/Pushkin Theatre co-production - which declared that this "deal" is "a no-brainer" that Isabella should just go ahead and take - IS IT?!? IS IT A NO-BRAINER?!? - but this is not the place, I guess.) What must it be like for her to hear her brother, her own flesh and blood, express such doubt? It's no wonder that they find themselves speaking to each other from opposite sides of such a great divide.
...I wish I liked Measure more. I find everything to do with the main characters fascinating, but there is only so much Pompey Bum &c. I can take. (Like, I get it, the way he goes from one form of profiting off of human flesh to another in going from bawd to executioner, and the hypocrisy of a society that would cast one of those professions as sinful and the other as lawful. And "Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live" is a great line. But...I don't know. I should reread it, probably; I've only read it twice.) Maybe it would help to see a good production - I have seriously mellowed in my distaste for Falstaff after loving Roger Allam's performance - but I've only seen the play once (the recent Globe screening with Mariah Gale as Isabella), and I just wasn't quite feeling it; it never came together as a coherent whole.
But anyway, Jade Anouka was Isabella in the episode (in the bits where they have Globe regulars perform bits of text; maybe one day I will actually get to see her in a whole part, that would be cool), and I learned a thing from her performance: the appalled start she gave when Claudio said, "Ay, but to die, and to go we know not where" reminded me, or made me aware, of the other gulf between her and her brother in this moment, not just the one where he wants her to do something terrible to save his life. It's a startling thing for him to say in any case - though less so to us, maybe, because Hamlet's "To be or not to be" intervenes with its "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns" (though Claudio's speech is weirdly bleaker, because Hamlet - being Hamlet, our pensive prince - is more afraid of the not-knowing than the destination, whereas Claudio is terrified of the pain and suffering to come, in a way that suggests he can't imagine any other outcome). But it's all the more startling for him to say it to a sister who has chosen to become a nun, to devote herself to God: she lives in a world of fierce and shining clarity, one that encompasses a certainty about heaven and hell; this is part of why she cannot trade her chastity for her brother's life, because she is adamant that the cost would be her soul, her eternal life. (Incidentally: I could scream forever about the way people so casually try to pathologize Isabella for making that choice, like in the NYT review I read just this week of the Cheek By Jowl/Pushkin Theatre co-production - which declared that this "deal" is "a no-brainer" that Isabella should just go ahead and take - IS IT?!? IS IT A NO-BRAINER?!? - but this is not the place, I guess.) What must it be like for her to hear her brother, her own flesh and blood, express such doubt? It's no wonder that they find themselves speaking to each other from opposite sides of such a great divide.
...I wish I liked Measure more. I find everything to do with the main characters fascinating, but there is only so much Pompey Bum &c. I can take. (Like, I get it, the way he goes from one form of profiting off of human flesh to another in going from bawd to executioner, and the hypocrisy of a society that would cast one of those professions as sinful and the other as lawful. And "Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live" is a great line. But...I don't know. I should reread it, probably; I've only read it twice.) Maybe it would help to see a good production - I have seriously mellowed in my distaste for Falstaff after loving Roger Allam's performance - but I've only seen the play once (the recent Globe screening with Mariah Gale as Isabella), and I just wasn't quite feeling it; it never came together as a coherent whole.