Isabella
Measure for Measure
Notes on Isabella
Shakespeare and the Casting Couch
Read the NoteStories about women summoned as supplicants to the portals of men with the power to grant their wishes, for a price, are common across professions, across countries, across millennia. Shakespeare dramatized the dilemmas some of these women faced in more than one of his plays.
In both Henry VI Part 3 and Measure for Measure, for example,
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Tempter or Tempted?
Read the NoteIn Measure for Measure (2.2.197), Angelo confronts, possibly for the first time in his life, the temptation of lust. And since this is new to him and because he is highly moralistic, he is troubled and confused. He reacts by asking himself a series of questions for which he has no answers.
What’s this? What’s this? Is this her fault,
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Seduction or Harassment?
Read the NoteShakespeare delights in the seduction ceremonies of bright men with even brighter women. These dialogues, whether between adolescents like Romeo and Juliet, more mature characters like Henry V and Princess Katherine, or seasoned adults like the widow Lady Grey and the sexual harasser King Edward, in this scene (3HenryVI 3.2.36), give Shakespeare opportunities to employ dazzling webworks of rhetorical exchanges.
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Sexual Extortion
Read the NoteIn Measure for Measure (2.4.95), Angelo, the classic sexual harasser, adopts a method of sexual extortion similar to King Edward’s in Henry VI Part 3 (3.2.36). Both men begin with oblique insinuations about their desires, which can be innocently misread. When the women, Isabella in Measure for Measure and Lady Grey in Henry VI,
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Quotes spoken by the character Isabella
Who’s that which calls?
Read the QuoteLucio, within
Ho, peace be in this place!
Isabella
Who’s that which calls?
Nun
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.
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Must he needs die?
Read the QuoteIsabella, to Angelo
Must he needs die?
Angelo
Maiden, no remedy.
Isabella
Yes, I do think that you might pardon him,
And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
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It is the law, not I, condemn your brother
Read the QuoteAngelo
It is the law, not I, condemn your brother.
Were he my kinsman, brother, or my son,
It should be thus with him. He must die tomorrow.
Isabella
Tomorrow? O, that’s sudden! Spare him, spare him.
He’s not prepared for death.Epizeuxis Even for our kitchens
We kill the fowl of season.
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At what hour tomorrow Shall I attend your Lordship?
Read the QuoteIsabella
At what hour tomorrow
Shall I attend your Lordship?
Angelo
At any time ‘fore noon.
Isabella
Save your honor.
She exits, with Lucio and Provost.
O cunning enemy that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook.
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Which had you rather, that the most just law Now took your brother’s life
Read the QuoteAngelo
Which had you rather, that the most just law
Now took your brother’s life, or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
As she that he hath stained?Metonymy & Oxymoron
Isabella
Sir, believe this:
I had rather give my body than my soul.
Angelo
I talk not of your soul.
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Admit no other way to save his life
Read the QuoteAngelo
Admit no other way to save his life—
As I subscribe not that, nor any other—
But, in the loss of question, that you, his sister,
Finding yourself desired of such a person
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from Metonymythe manacles
Of the binding law,
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Now, sister, what’s the comfort?
Read the QuoteClaudio
Now, sister, what’s the comfort?
Isabella
Why,
As all comforts are, most good, most good indeed.Epizeuxis
Lord Angelo, having affairs to heaven,
Intends you for his swift ambassador,
Where you shall be an everlasting leiger;Metaphor
Therefore your best appointment make with speed.
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The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good
Read the QuoteDuke, as Friar, to Isabella
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief
in goodness,Chiasmus but grace, being the soul of your complexion,
shall keep the body of it ever fair. The assault that Angelo
hath made to you,
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Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?
Read the QuoteIsabella
Can this be so? Did Angelo so leave her?Pysma
Duke, as Friar
Left her in her tears and dried not one
of them with his comfort, swallowed his vows
whole,Ellipsis & Metaphors pretending in her discoveries of dishonor; in
few, bestowed her on her own lamentation,
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What is the news from this good deputy?
Read the QuoteDuke, as Friar
What is the news from this good deputy?
Isabella
He hath a garden circummured with brick,
Whose western side is with a vineyard backed;
And to that vineyard is a planchèd gate
That makes his opening with this bigger key.
This other doth command a little door
Which from the vineyard to the garden leads.
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