Tea at Trianon: The Lenten Politics of 'Measure for Measure'

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, March 9, 2025

The Lenten Politics of 'Measure for Measure'

From First Things:

At the beginning of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, withdraws from the city for undisclosed reasons and leaves his full “terror” in the hands of a deputy, Angelo, assisted by the older, wiser Escalus. We quickly learn the duke’s departure was a ruse. He returns to the city disguised as a friar and manages much of the action of the play. As he confesses to Friar Thomas when he assumes his mendicant disguise, he’s been lax in enforcing the law, and the city has descended into chaos, with sex and alcohol as its primary commercial products. Rather than cracking down himself, the duke lets Angelo play Bad Cop.
Just as importantly, the duke is suspicious of Angelo. He’s “precise” and “scarce confesses / That his blood flows,” but the duke wonders whether his reputation for rectitude is more than skin-deep. There’s one way to find out “what our seemers be”: Dress him in authority and see if “power change purpose.” Power is privilege. Power is also, always, a test.

As it turns out, Angelo more “seems” than “is.” He closes the brothels and arrests sexual criminals under long-unused statutes, making an example of Claudio, who’s sentenced to death for getting his fiancé Juliet pregnant. When Claudio’s sister Isabella, a novice nun, pleads with Angelo, she inadvertently awakens his cloistered sexual desire. He proposes a deal: If Isabella yields the treasure of her body to Angelo, he’ll reverse his sentence against Claudio. Isabella vehemently refuses, and when her brother asks her to take the deal, she denounces him with equal vehemence: “Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd: / ‘Tis best thou diest quickly.”

Early on, Shakespeare sets the drama in an overtly theological context. Men drinking in a brothel joke about pirates and soldiers editing inconvenient commandments from the Decalogue. In the first scene, the duke reminds Angelo that virtue should shine like a torch; hidden virtues are none. Literary scholar Darryl Gless hears an echo of Jesus’s “New Law,” summarized in the Sermon on the Mount: Jesus’s disciples are the “light of the world” who must let their light shine, rather than hiding it under a bushel (Matt. 5:14–15). That allusion sets up a complex thematic matrix for the rest of the play. Characters and action oscillate between cloistered or disguised goodness and public goodness. But Jesus’s words cut more deeply, because some displayed virtue is, like Angelo’s, no more than display. Men dressed in authority do public good to gain public favor, not to lead men to praise of God (Matt. 5:16). If private virtue is nothing without public good, it’s equally true that public good is hollowed out by private vice. (Read more.)