Ibsen’s play The Doll’s House ends with Nora Helmer closing the door of her house, leaving Torvald and her children behind: the slam heard round the world. It’s unambiguous; she’s out of there. [For the German premier, however, Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending with the implication that Nora stays—a “barbaric outrage,” as he called it.]
In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio proposes marriage to the novice nun Isabella. She makes no reply and the play ends, leaving productions challenged to come up with her response. Dare Isabella replicate Nora?
The Duke’s proposal resembles a command more than a direct question. Although he engineered saving her condemned brother, the Duke let Isabella believe that Claudio was executed, a cruel test. Directly after giving her the welcome news that her brother lives he adds, “for your lovely sake Give me your hand and say you will be mine.” In his final speech explaining and setting everything right, the Duke persists: “Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imparts your good, Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline, What’s mine is yours and what is yours is mine.”
Perhaps she offers her hand in acceptance: has she a choice? Perhaps she looks as shocked as the audience feels: little up until this moment has suggested such an outcome. The poster illustrating this post, above, depicts not the Duke but Angelo, his strict deputy who offers to save Isabella’s brother in exchange for her virginity. A bedtrick saves her, but the Duke’s line is all too similar to Angelo’s proposition re. Isabella’s chastity: “what’s mine is yours and what is yours is mine.”
An ending resembling Nora’s door slam would be Isabella slapping the Duke’s face, which at least one production has dared. To quote Peter Holland’s review of the RSC 1994 production directed by Stephen Pimlott, with Stella Gonet as Isabella and Michael Feast as the Duke: “By the end, the Duke’s proposal of marriage was met by Isabella’s slapping his face, then kissing him and then, just as the audience was starting to feel uncomfortable with the cliché, rejecting him sharply and standing apart in tears, twitching.” I wish I’d seen that production: that dramatic ending still sounds open-ended. Must she marry him anyway? A harsh submission.
More positive might be a conclusion suggested by Shakespeare’s earlier problematical comedy, The Taming of a Shrew. As the play opens, Kate Minola has a notorious mouth. Rude, angry, resisting feminine subjugation, she meets her match in Petruchio. He treats her to a dose of her own medicine—not by brutal taming. He too goes without food and sleep; he shares her deprivations.
Near the end of the play, Kate and Petruchio create a witty conspiracy to accede to social norms. Sure, she can play the docile, agreeable wife, even advising the other two brides to submit to their husbands—but by doing so tongue in cheek, she and Petruchio create a new sort of marriage. Companionate, as the Elizabethans would call it: a union more mutually fulfilling than the other two more traditional, and already fractious, couples joined in that final scene.
Kate will not shut up, but she’ll tame her tongue to civility. From the first, she rejected any ordinary suitor, and Petruchio wouldn’t want a simpering, selfish Bianca as a life partner. His final lines seal their bond as equals. “Come, Kate, we’ll to bed. We three are married, but you two are sped.”
In Measure for Measure, the director and actor determine how Isabella responds to the Duke’s startling marriage proposal—a likely reason, along with its other ambiguities, the play has been neglected and faulted over the centuries. If she extends her hand to the Duke, is Isabella agreeing not only to renounce her chosen vocation as nun but also to subject herself to the wifely role she’s rejected?
That choice could seem acceptable if one sees her conversations with the Duke, disguised as Friar Lodowick, as the basis of a friendship, but she gives no indication of personal affection. Or perhaps Isabella’s wider experience of the world over the course of the play would embolden her to ally herself to the voice of power in Vienna as companion of the Duke. Or, if she simply looks stunned, the question is begged.
Or: Isabella can slap him! Certainly the Duke deserves it (though the 1994 RSC production sounds open-ended as to consequences.)
What the ending would best have suited Queen Elizabeth I?
The first recorded production was 10 months after her death, at the court of King James I on December 26, 1604. But . . . she could have seen it. In February, 1601, Queen Elizabeth had to sentence her onetime favorite, Robert Devereux, Duke of Essex, to death for treason. Henceforth her health and spirits faltered, though doctors found little wrong. Earlier, she had summoned Shakespeare’s company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to the palace for private performances.
When they hear of her ill health, they hope for another such summons, as a play would surely be a welcome distraction for royal eyes. We’re moving into fiction here—specifically my novel Bedtrick. Although historical novelists base our stories on history, we may fill in gaps. In my novel, Shakespeare has been working on a new sort of comedy. Although it’s not ready for public performance, in the autumn of 1602 the players know their parts for Measure for Measure.
To their delight, a summons comes from Sir Robert Cecil for a small private performance of Shakespeare’s newest play in the royal dining room. The Queen, though showing her age and ill health, is engaged with the show, laughing at Pompey the bawd and attentive to Angelo and Isabella. Sander Cooke, who plays Isabella, notices a tear in her eye as Lucio slanders the Duke to Friar Lodowick. Essex’s revolt made the Queen too feel exposed to slander. As Lodowick says, “No might nor greatness in mortality can censure scape. Back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong can tie the gall up in a slanderous tongue?”
Shortly after this scene the Queen slumps in her chair, her ladies rush to her aid, and the show is halted. Departing abruptly, the actors are certain they’ll return to finish the play: the Queen would want to see it on her deathbed!
In Bedtrick, and history doesn’t contradict, Measure for Measure opens at the Globe in January, 1603. In that production, Sander/Isabella stands silent, aghast at the Duke’s proposal. After seeing the show, three female characters discuss the ambiguous ending: is a woman better off with a husband—a noble one at that—or in a convent?
Later that month, the company learns that Queen Elizabeth is moving from Whitehall to her ‘warm box,’ Richmond Palace, and lament they’ll never again see her. But then an order comes from Sir Robert Cecil: the Queen requests a farewell performance of Measure for Measure in her Presence Chamber before a larger audience.
In that production they offer the traditional ending for a romantic comedy. Not only does Isabella take the Duke’s hand, but Claudio and Juliet embrace, Angelo puts an arm around Mariana, Lucio and Kate Keepdown do a jolly little dance, and all four couples dance sedately, happy marriages for all.
Afterwards, Sander grumbles to Richard Burbage, who plays the Duke, that a happy ending is all well and good for Richmond Palace, but “Next time I play Isabella at the Globe, I shall slap your face!”
Burbage laughs. “I’ll stagger—and then take your slapping hand in my own. The Duke will be marrying a regular Kate the Shrew.”
Sander: “Her Majesty might well have preferred that ending.”
End of chapter; Queen Elizabeth dies in the next.
Measure for Measure never appeared in Quarto form; its first publication was in the First Folio of 1623. Thomas Middleton had a hand in the script, and we don’t know what editing might have happened between performance and publication. Isabella’s reaction, however, may never have been more explicit than silence, as the Folio has it.
Even if a production opts for a slap, the consequences aren’t clear-cut. But in a play so equivocal—justice can be ambiguous, no character is easily categorized, and marriage does not necessarily connote happiness—Isabella’s replying with a slap has entertaining potential. Perhaps the ‘new society’ Northrup Frye suggests arises from marriages in comedies will come about in Vienna ruled by a chastened Duke and outspoken Isabella.