Shakespeare's Isabella and Cressida on the Modern Stage

Home , Anne Barton, Claire Skinner, Clare Holman, David Haig, Francesca Annis, Hermione (opera)

''Shrewd Tempters with their Tongues..,:

Anna Kamaralli

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, School of Theatre, Film and Dance of the University ofNSW In partial fulfillment of the degree ofMA(Hons) 2002 ii

Abstract

Shakespeare's Isabella (Measure for Measure) and Cressida (Troilus and Cressida) share an unusual critical and theatrical history. Unappreciated o:ri stage, contentious on the page, they have traditionally provoked discomfort among critics, wl).o l).ave ~~€::J:'! quicker to see them as morally reprehensible than to note their positive qualities. Seemingly at polar opposites of the personal and moral spectrum, the two share an independence of spirit, a refusal to conform to the desires and requirements of men, and a power to polarize opinion.

This thesis considers the ways in which attitudes to Isabella and Cressida on the English speaking stage have shifted, over the latter half of the twentieth century, in the light of an escalating public awareness of issues of feminism and gender politics. Against a close reading of Shakespeare's text, both literary and performance criticism are examined, together with archival material relating to theatre productions of the plays, primarily by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The thesis concludes that in the case of both characters a change is indeed discemable. For Isabella, it is informed by the idea that the ethical code to which she adheres deserves respect, and that her marriage to the Duke is neither inevitable, nor inevitably welcomed by her. Cressida has undergone a more dramatic change: she is no longer assumed to be constitutionally immoral, and her behaviour is examined without preconception. While the full range of possibilities offered by the text for a feminist reading of these "problem women" seem not yet to have found their way onto the stage with any regularity, a new focus on reading Isabella and Cressida can be identified: it is constituted less by a tendency to judge the character for the choices she makes, and more by a readiness to examine precisely the nature of the choices open to her. iii

Acknowledgements

My gratitude and warmest thanks: to my supervisors, John Golder and Richard Madelaine, who have been stalwart throughout this long endeavour; to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, for funding assistance with travel, enabling me to undertake research in England; to the Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Royal National Theatre, London, and the Bell Shakespeare Company, for access to their archives; to Nick Enright, Susan Lyons, Simon Phillips and John Bell, for always responding to my questions; to Bille Brown for his generosity with time and contacts; to Company B, Belvoir for its tolerance of my vagaries; and to Innes Wilson, with the nurturing instincts of Demeter and the patience of Job. iv

Table of Contents

Abstract 11

Acknowledgements 111

Table of Contents lV

List of Illustrations V

I: Introduction 1

II: Isabella's Choice 26

III: Cressida' s Betrayal 81

Conclusion 142

Appendix: Productions Referred To 146

Bibliography 148 V

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1 Barbara Jefford as Isabella, 1950

Fig. 2 Judi Dench as Isabella, 1962

Fig. 3 Estelle Kohler as Isabella, 1970

Fig. 4 Francesca Annis as Isabella, 1974

Fig. 5 Paola Dionisotti as Isabella, 1978

Fig. 6 Juliet Stevenson as Isabella, 1983

Fig. 7 Josette Simon as Isabella, 1987

Fig. 8 Stella Gonet as Isabella, 1994

Fig. 9 Clare Holman as Isabella, 1998

Fig. 10 Muriel Pavlow as Cressida, 1954

Fig. 11 Dorothy Tutin as Cressida, 1960

Fig. 12 Helen Mirren as Cressida, 1968

Fig. 13 Francesca Annis as Cressida, 1976

Fig. 14 Francesca Annis as Cressida, 1976

Fig. 15 Juliet Stevenson as Cressida, 1985

Fig. 16 Victoria Hamilton as Cressida, 1996

Fig. 17 Jayne Ashbourne as Cressida, 1998

Fig. 18 Sophie Okonedo as Cressida, 1999

Fig. 19 Blazey Best as Cressida, 2000

Fig. 20 Barbara Jefford as Isabella, 1950

Fig. 21 Dorothy Tutin as Cressida, 1960 I: Introduction

It would be hard to find two female characters in Shakespeare more apparently different than Isabella in Measure for Measure and Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, the one a novice nun prepared to put her chastity before all other considerations, the other a symbol of female sexual faithlessness. Appearances are deceptive; the two roles have much in common that can be discerned not only in the playtexts, but also in their critical and performance history. To begin with, they slot all too easily into the virgin/whore dichotomy traditional in Western literature; but Isabella is many things besides a virgin, and Cressida cannot be summed up by calling her a whore. Both diverge dramatically from fulfilling the function of the conventional theatrical heroine. Both are victims of male power systems in which the woman is an item of currency to be traded for a man. Both defeat attempts by men to be the controlling force on their sexuality. Both fight a system of sexual politics that would sexualize their bodies and their language and barter their sexuality. Both, of course, are fictitious constructs of a male playwright, writing at a time that predates such modem terminology, and yet both embody questions about women's physical and sexual autonomy that are only recently being addressed in public debate.

This thesis aims to consider the performance of these roles in the light of literary criticism of the characters and the plays in which they feature, and compare it with the way the roles have been staged over the course of the second half of the twentieth century, and also with a close reading of the text. It will argue that Isabella and Cressida have a number of marked similarities as characters, and that these have provoked further similarities in the way they have been treated by critics, theatre practitioners and performance analysts. These similarities have extended to the way that changing attitudes to women over the last half-century have markedly changed the way Isabella and Cressida have been interpreted and presented. Feminist thought has had a similar effect on each, demonstrating that previously commonplace notions of the right and wrong of their actions are largely a matter of the perspective of the observer. This thesis will examine where these changes in staging have intersected with shifts in the treatment of Shakespeare's female characters in critical theory, and also make an assessment of the potential of the plays for feminist readings and stagings, along with some of the problems concomitant with such an aim. 2

Helena in All's Well That Ends Well shares certain features with Isabella and Cressida, including several that are pertinent to this thesis. These three are the heroines of those plays most usually classified as Shakespeare's "problem plays". Like Isabella and Cressida, Helena acts in opposition to the demands of the man closest to her; in this case Bertram, the man she loves, and whom she pursues despite his rejection of her. She shares with the other two a challenge to conventions of appropriate behaviour for a woman, and in particular, for a fictional romantic heroine. The traditional pattern of the comic or romantic story involves a pursuing hero who completes a series of tasks, and gains the heroine as his reward. The heroine's task is to be beautiful and virtuous, and neither to reject nor pursue the hero. None of the problem play heroines conclude by being the prize achieved. Instead, each makes a moral choice, and her decision goes directly against the wishes of the man who appears to have the greatest claim on her. Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well also share significant plot similarities, notably a bed trick and subterfuge that is used to a redeeming end. Crucially, however, Helena differs from Isabella and Cressida in that no-one tries to trade her, or to force her into an exchange that puts her in danger of physical violation. Also, this thesis is largely about the immense changes in perspective on Isabella and Cressida since the women's movement became a popular social force, a change which has not occurred in a comparable way to Helena ( as a true apostle of chaste love, Helena has never been as much maligned as the other two, and as the driving force behind her own story, she has been less in need ofrescue by feminists). 1

This dissertation will focus on late-twentieth-century performances, from 1950 to 2000, the period of most rapid change in the position of women in Western society. The emergence of

1 Also, Helena has many significant features in common with other Shakespearean female characters, in plays not usually styled "problem plays". The role of women in the plot structure of All's Well shares most with Love's Labours Lost and The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which women band together without need of male guidance or assistance, to trick men, in order to teach them a lesson about relationships. These others being two of Shakespeare's most lighthearted comedies, the "dark comedy" label for All's Well may seem undeserved, were it not that Helena personally could be seen to have more in common with the more serious Cleopatra and Volumnia. In all three of these cases the woman remains entirely focused on the man, and yet does not take orders from him, seeking instead to turn him to her way of seeing things. Helena has also been compared with Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona, for their similar use of subterfuge to pursue a man who has rejected them, and for their sheer willingness to be humiliated by him, a characteristic not shared by any of the others mentioned above. Ellen Terry called them "doormat types" (quoted in Joseph G. Price, The Unfortunate Comedy (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1968), p.99). 3 performance theory and feminist theory in Shakespearean criticism during this time, as well as the broader acknowledgement in society of issues surrounding women's rights, make it an ideal period in which to look at the influence of sexual politics. It is based around a core study of productions mounted by Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). While not suggesting that the RSC's productions of Shakespeare are in any way representative of Shakespearean performance around the world, this thesis is substantially about determining what changes have occurred in the staging of Isabella and Cressida over a specific period, and examining the work of a single company makes it possible to observe some kind of continuum of interpretation, in order to pinpoint periods of change. The RSC provides particularly useful material when analysing a play' s production history, first, because its high turnover of Shakespeare productions will always provide several examples of a given play at reasonably regular intervals, and secondly because of the extensive records kept of these productions.

By way of comparison and illustration, reference will also be made to a number of USA, Canadian and Australian productions. When innovations in staging and interpretation have occurred elsewhere, comparing these with the interpretations in play during the same period at the RSC demonstrates some interesting divergences of approach. In North America, the large number of companies operating as part of an extensive system of"Shakespeare Festivals" makes it difficult to adequately summarize trends in interpretation, and renders assessment of these productions more anecdotal than systematic. The Australian theatre industry is much smaller, and the weight of the Shakespearean canon rests more lightly upon it, which makes certain Australian productions illuminating to discuss, as they do not operate within a framework of political and theatrical tradition in the same way as those of the Northern hemisphere. This other extreme of scale, however, whereby no theatre company has staged more than one production of either of the plays examined here, means that these examples cannot be taken as suggestive of an interpretative pattern.

In order to gauge whether and where attitudes to Isabella and Cressida in performance have changed, I have examined reviews, promptbooks, videos and live performances where possible. Reviews and critical accounts were available for all the performances mentioned, and these are the only records I have used when discussing North American productions. In discussing performances by the RSC, I have also made use of material from the promptbooks 4 and production photographs from all their productions of both Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, and video records of all since 1983. I also examined the promptbook and archival video of Trevor Nunn's 1999 production of Troilus and Cressida for the Royal National Theatre. Access to practitioners still working in Australia allowed for a better sense of the process and intentions of the Australian productions than it was possible to obtain for others. I had the opportunity to observe the rehearsal period of Michael Bogdanov's production of Troilus and Cressida, for example, which permitted insights into the decision making process, not just the result. I was also able to speak to the directors of a number of Australian productions.2 This primary source material has been examined alongside critical material from the corresponding periods, as well as criticism that provides a historical background, in order to discern any parallels or reciprocal influences.

The representation of a character in a Shakespearean production on the modem stage is broadly derived from a combination of the opinion and abilities of the actor; the vision of the director, assisted by the designers; and the text. This combination obviously provides an infinite number of possible variations. When there are marked similarities in the presentation of a character from one production to another, the assumption might be that the common characteristics are derived from the text, as this is the material shared by all productions of a play. When a number of directors make the same interpretative decision, it is helpful to go back to the text to examine the degree of flexibility in the lines, and whether a conventional decision is a text-based one. Productions of Shakespeare are interpretations of a text, and each decision about presentation that is made is in itself an interpretation. Some of these interpretations follow literal guidelines identified in the text, others are incorporated to create a consistent interpretative reading, while others are imposed to enhance a director's vision of the meaning of the text, or the text as a vehicle for a meaning decided on by the director. For the purposes of this thesis, the question arising from these issues is, where did the directors get their interpretations oflsabella and Cressida? From the text, or from which other influences? Close examination of Isabella and Cressida in performance will therefore be juxtaposed with a close reading of the text and of textual criticism to establish where they intersect and where they diverge.

2 Nick Enright (Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney, 1985) and John Bell (Nimrod Theatre, Sydney, 1972) regarding Measure for Measure; Michael Bogdanov (Bell Shakespeare Company, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, 2000) and Bryan Nason (Grin and Tonic, Brisbane, 1989) regarding Troilus and Cressida. 5

One challenge inevitably encountered in this kind of research is the uneven nature of the source material. While it was possible to look at promptbooks and videos for some productions, the total information available on others came from reviews, and while detailed critical accounts have been written about some performances, others only had a short column in one or two newspapers, with no guarantee that the reviewer would have any special interest in the chief female role.

Other difficulties arose out of the very nature of using live productions as a source. Being written for the stage, it is not unreasonable to think that this is how the plays are best interpreted. 3 In performance, elements that are less apparent upon reading the text are made plain; difficulties appear where they were not guessed at and vanish where they seemed intractable. Performance analysis is invaluable in the criticism of playtexts, as it is a perpetual reminder of the absence of a single, unequivocal meaning for a play. There can never be a sole, possible production of a play, so the critic cannot maintain the illusion that there is a sole possible reading. Performance analysis also, of course, carries its own pitfalls. As Sarah Werner expresses it: There is the question of the reviews to address: who wrote reviews for this production, what were their criteria for evaluation, what ideologies are reflected in their criteria, for whom were they writing? One's own response to a performance is no less complicated: what is the difference between watching a performance and recalling a performance, and why do different viewers see and recall different things?4 In addition, no two performances will be quite the same, even within the one production. Performances grow, develop and change in the course of a production's life. In the end, the only way to address such difficulties is to canvass as many opinions of a performance as possible, and remain aware of the imprecise nature of the task.

There is also a difficulty in laying the work of critics beside that of practitioners, as their different purposes are usually manifested in different terms of reference when discussing character. Elizabeth Schafer has drawn attention to this problem:

3 The chief pioneer of performance analysis as the most effective way of interpreting Shakespeare was J.L. Styan, The Shakespeare Revolution: Criticism and Performance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977). 4 Sarah Werner, Shakespeare and Feminist Performance: Ideology on Stage (London: Routledge, 2001), p.69. 6

They [critics] would argue that characters must not be treated as if they were real people - they are dramatic constructions with specific narrative and political functions in the text ... However, many practitioners, when they are speaking of how they work on developing a character for performance, often will talk about those characters as if they were real people. 5

In writing about modem interpretations of Shakespeare's female characters, it must be borne in mind that these parts (like all those written by Shakespeare and his contemporaries) would have originally been written to be played by boys, who filled the apprentice positions in English acting troupes of the period. This meant that as well as enacting specific women characters, they were demonstrating "woman", and this will influence the work of the women who now play the roles themselves. Lorraine Helms has concisely summarized these issues from the perspective of the female performer. She points out that historic enquiry cannot recover the responses of the audience for whom the plays were written: "The performance of the boy actor could have been eroticized for some spectators, aesthetically distanced for others. It could have been illusionistic at one moment, only to be broken by self-reflexive theatricality at another."6 The fact that the women's roles were not written for women must have influenced their construction, as the boys playing women had to employ strategies to differentiate themselves on stage from the men playing men, and the boys playing boys. This in turn will affect the performances given now that women are playing the roles, as "textual strategies, originally designed to feminize the boy actor, may infantilize or eroticize the woman who now plays the woman's part".7 This means that having women play these roles will not automatically result in a performance that is a more genuine or complex representation of "female presence" on stage. Or, to extrapolate into the point made by Dympna Callaghan, "change in representation alone does not bring about political change". 8 This is not to say that these difficulties render this material unsuitable for female actors to perform, only that active and specific strategies may be required to bring a woman's understanding of"woman" to roles written by men for male apprentices. As the province of the junior members of the company, female roles were necessarily fewer in number, and it has

5 Elizabeth Schafer, Ms-Directing Shakespeare: Women Direct Shakespeare (London: Women's Press, 1998), p.5. 6 Lorraine Helms, "Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance", in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), 196-203, p.197. 7 Helms, p.198. 8 Dympna Callaghan, Shakespeare Without Women (London: Routledge, 2000), p.18. 7

been argued that they were less developed. 9 In the case of Shakespeare, however, the construction of many of his plays shows great reliance on the talent of his boy actors. Roles like Rosalind and Cleopatra, along with plays like Love's Labour's Lost and All's Well That Ends Well, demonstrate that he had no hesitation in making the boy actors central to a production.

Troilus and Cressida has a shorter history of performance than most of Shakespeare's plays, as there is no record of any production before the early twentieth century, and there appear to have been more productions in the 1990s alone than in the entire first half of last century. It should be kept in mind, therefore, that many critics who shaped the thinking on this play would probably never have seen it staged professionally. Measure for Measure has always been, and remains, much more frequently performed, though it has never been as popular as the so-called "festive" comedies. Measure for Measure was never entirely out of production, though it suffered with many other plays, during the eighteenth century, from adaptations such as Dryden's (who also re-wrote Troilus and Cressida as Truth Found Too Late, with a Cressida who only pretends faithlessness). Its potential political aspects seem not to have been emphasized until the 1970s, when directors such as Charles Marowitz, John Bell and Keith Hack staged the play as a criticism of the manipulativeness of the ruling classes.

In order to judge whether there have been similarities historically in the treatment of Isabella and Cressida on page and stage, and in order to give a context to any challenges there have been to formerly accepted ideas about their character and dramatic function, it is necessary to examine something of the critical history surrounding them. Isabella and Cressida have arguably been Shakespeare's least popular heroines. Of those female characters who do not function as the villain in the plot structure, probably only Lady Macbeth has been on the receiving end of a comparable degree of name-calling. 10 Given that Isabella and Cressida are involved in no murders, usurpations or criminal acts of any kind, it is interesting to examine what they have done to provoke such vitriol, much of it more personal than analytical. When Ronald R. Macdonald writes of Isabella that,

9 Michael Shapiro, Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), Scott McMillin and Sally-Beth MacLean, The Queen's Men and Their Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998). 10 The key word here is "degree". There are plenty of critics who speak ill of Cleopatra, Helena or Gertrude, for example, but these characters and others remain only rarely discussed in terms similar to those described above. 8

In her bland assumption about Claudio's willingness to sacrifice his life for her virginity, Isabella can hardly be imagining the scene of her brother's impending execution, the severed head, for instance, its mouth set in a rictus of agony, the trunk spurting blood, slick, wet, and all too palpable. 11 or A.P. Rossiter writes of Cressida: She is a chatty, vulgar little piece, and in the rhyming soliloquy at the end (when she speaks what she takes for her mind), the principles of the loftily chaste heroines of amour cortois are brought down to exactly the level of Mrs Peachum's advice in The Beggar's Opera, 12 the tone of condescending nastiness is common in the discussion of these two characters, unusual in the discussion of other female characters, and close to unheard of in discussion of male characters. Clearly, these two have transgressed in some way. Here, then, is a brief outline of some of the criticism pertaining to them in relation to questions of character and genre.

A general overview of the writing on Shakespeare's female characters shows that even those who have specialized in this area have frequently balked at dealing with this strange pair. Anna Jameson in 1832 wrote probably the earliest book specifically on Shakespeare's women, including a lengthy (though discreetly phrased) chapter in praise oflsabella, but no discussion of Cressida. 13 Louis Lewes covers almost all the plays of the First Folio in The Women ofShakespeare, but unaccountably excludes only Troilus and Cressida, together with Henry IV and Henry V. His description of Measure for Measure does not specify what it is that Claudio does to Juliet, or what it is that Angelo is proposing to do to Isabella, but does use the word "repulsive" three times in describing the plot. 14 Helena Faucit, Lady Martin, a prominent Shakespearean actress of the Victorian period, does not include either of them among those she treats. 15 Frank Harris, whose 1912 book Women ofShakespeare was the first of the twentieth century on the topic, does not mention Isabella at all. Harris was

11 Ronald R. Macdonald, "Measure for Measure: The Flesh Made Word", Studies in English Literature, 30 (1990), 265-282, p.278. 12 A.P.Rossiter, Angel With Horns and Other Shakespeare Lectures, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longrnans, Green & Co., 1961), p.132. 13 Anna B. Jameson, Characteristics of Women, Moral, Poetical and Historical (London: Bell, 1832). 14 Louis Lewes, The Women ofShakespeare (London: Hodder Brothers, 1894), 297-302. 15 Helena Faucit, On Some ofShakespeare's Female Characters (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1885). Those covered are Ophelia, Portia, Desdemona, Juliet, Imogen, Rosalind, Beatrice and Hermione. 9 convinced that Shakespeare's presentation of women was based on the progressive stages of an ongoing affair with Queen Elizabeth's lady-in-waiting, Mary Fitton. He discusses Cressida within this scenario, but a prospective nun who expresses no interest at all in romance was, presumably, impossible to slot into his theory. 16

Twelve years later, Agnes Mure Mackenzie accepts Harris's premise that Cressida is an expression of Shakespeare's bitterness at his own betrayal, though she rejects the specificity ofHarris's Mary Fitton. Mackenzie covers all Shakespeare's plays, and discusses his female characters as if they were real people, imagining what they would have done in one another's places. In both Cressida and Isabella's cases, she indicates that Beatrice would have behaved in a more appealing way, though again in both cases she acknowledges that she cannot specify where their language differs, only that we are left with a bad "impression" of them. 17 Mackenzie was the first to include both Isabella and Cressida in a work on Shakespeare's female characters but, after her, little appears to have been published for some decades that is specifically related to this area.

For women writing on Shakespeare's women, the weight of critical history could not be expected to be shed all at once, even by those actively looking for an approach that privileged female experience. One of the first to write on Shakespeare's female characters with an interest in finding a feminist perspective was Juliet Dusinberre. 18 There was little previous groundwork for her to build on, and in consequence this may have led her to accept some of the conventional pronouncements on Isabella, and particularly Cressida, that other feminists have subsequently questioned. Similarly, in one of the first anthologies of feminist criticism of Shakespeare, The Woman's Part, Gayle Greene contributed an essay that was an important recontextualising of Cressida as a character functioning within a society that imposed certain patriarchal constraints, but once again accepted many pre-feminist assumptions about Cressida's actions. She does not question that "seen by the Greeks as a 'daughter of the game' and 'sluttish spoils of opportunity', Cressida is quick to live down to their view of her, allowing herself to be 'kiss'd in general"' and that this is a "sudden and complete violation of

16 Frank Harris, Women ofShakespeare (London: Methuen, 1912). 17 Agnes Mure Mackenzie, The Women in Shakespeare's Plays (London: William Heinemann, 1924), pp.189, 239. 18 Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (London: Macmillan, 1975). 10 declared intentions". 19 Isabella only appears in this anthology as a passing reference by writers concerned with other topics.

As late as 1981, Angela Pitt was prepared to completely assimilate the opinions of the most conservative critics. For her, Cressida is "as hard, calculating and promiscuous as the stereotype of any professional prostitute", but, as in the case of Dusinberre, her assessment is based not on what Cressida says, but on the assumption that she does not mean what she says. For example, Cressida "cunningly boosts his ego by suggesting she is so enamoured of Troilus as to reveal any thought to him ... Troilus is completely taken in by her simpering false modesty''.20 Although admiring oflsabella as "supreme amongst Shakespeare's heroines as a symbol of chastity and purity", Pitt finds her "an aloof, daunting figure, too remote to engage our sympathy".21 She seems to judge these characters very much by the standards of a heterosexual man - according merely to how sexually accessible they are. Isabella can be admired, but not enjoyed; Cressida is there to be enjoyed, but certainly not admired.

Irene Dash22 has written two entire books on women in Shakespeare without discussing either Cressida or Isabella, and Linda Bamber23 and Lisa Jardine24 mention them only in passing and in footnotes. Judith Cook confesses herself uncertain how to classify Cressida, including her in her chapter titled "villainesses", by default. Her chapter on Isabella (whom she classifies with Portia) quotes a number of academic critics (ranging from the 1830s to the 1960s) for contrasting viewpoints on the character, and canvasses the opinion of Barbara Jefford and Lane Lapotaire, who have played the role, but draws no conclusions. 25

Cook's quoting of actors who have played the roles in question draws attention to the fact that none of the books mentioned above are concerned with performance analysis, or how these characters have been interpreted by those staging the plays. Probably the first book to look at

19 Gayle Greene, "Shakespeare's Cressida: 'A Kind of Self", in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. C. Lenz, G. Greene and C. Neely (Chicago: Illinois UP, 1980), 133-149, p.143. 20 Angela Pitt, Shakespeare's Women (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1981), pp.143, 145. 21 Pitt, pp.102, 105. 22 Irene Dash, Wooing, Wedding and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays (New York: Columbia UP, 1981), and Women's Worlds in Shakespeare's Plays (New York: Columbia UP, 1997). 23 Linda Bamber, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1982). 24 Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age ofShakespeare (Brighton: Harvester, 1983). 25 Judith Cook, Women in Shakespeare (London: Virgin, 1990). 11

Shakespeare's female characters from a performance perspective is Carol Rutter's Clamorous Voices. In this series of interviews with RSC actresses on their interpretations of parts they have performed, Rutter places great emphasis on the way the power relationships in Shakespeare's plays have been staged in modem productions. Her belief is that those who had the power to determine the overriding interpretation of the production (these days the director) frequently diminished the complexity of both the female characters and the overall narrative by making assumptions about characters not substantiated by the text. 26 Although only Isabella is covered in Clamorous Voices, Rutter's more recent Enter the Body closely examines Cressida from a performance perspective.27

Penny Gay has written the most detailed survey to date of the stage representation of some of Shakespeare's better known female characters from the comedies, examining productions by the RSC since the Second World War. 28 The influence of the feminist movement on these interpretations is one of her primary concerns, as well as the difficulties faced by female directors or actors wishing to bring a feminist perspective to their work. Such an in-depth examination of these roles, including Isabella, as they function on stage, is important beyond the light it sheds on the individual characters. It is a reminder that performance is what these texts are really for, and that Shakespeare's women are playhouse creatures. Concerning itself with the heroines of the comedies, Gay's book does not discuss Cressida. In a different discussion of feminism, text and performance, published in the same year, however, Lorraine Helms includes a fascinating look at the linguistic dynamics of female soliloquy in Shakespeare, using Cressida as her example.29

Janet Adelman's Suffocating Mothers is, by contrast, less concerned with the plays as texts for performance, and more with the material they provide to a reader equipped with the ideas of Freud and later psychologists. She believes that the fear of engulfment by the mother colours most of the sexual relationships represented in the plays of the second half of Shakespeare's career. While not forgetting that these characters are fictitious constructs of a playwright, she argues persuasively that Troilus fears his own sexuality, as a corruption of maternal purity,

26 Carol Rutter, Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today (London: Routledge, 1988). 27 Carol Chillington Rutter, Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage (London: Routledge, 200 l ). 28 Penny Gay, As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women (London: Routledge, 1994). 29 Lorraine Helms, "Acts of Resistance", in The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics, ed. Dyrnpna C. Callaghan, Lorraine Helms and Jyotsna Singh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 102-145. 12 and needs to transfer the guilt of it onto Cressida, and that Isabella manifests a similar fear that consummating her sexual desires will sully her father. 30

Most recently, important work has been done on building a context for Isabella within the tradition of female religious figures, both in literature by Alison Findlay and in history by Alice Arnott Oppen. 31 In Dympna Callaghan's recent Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, however, both Isabella and Cressida receive only incidental mention, despite Isabella seeming to be a highly suitable subject for the section on Shakespeare's relationship to religion.32

While those writing about Shakespeare's women have produced relatively patchy material on Isabella and Cressida, more has been generated by those writing about the plays from the perspective of genre. Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida have both been called "problem plays", a term that must be addressed when looking at their critical history, as some of the most prominent writers on Shakespeare have discussed Isabella and Cressida within this framework. The other play most commonly included in this category is All's Well That Ends Well, with which they share many features, and when the term is used without further clarification it usually applies to these three. Other plays that have been grouped thus are Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and Timon ofAthens. 33 The designation "problem play" was first used to describe the theatre of Ibsen and Shaw, where a moral question was presented in a realistic style, resulting in a play that is neither entirely a comedy nor a tragedy. Shaw himself wrote that "the material of the dramatist is always some conflict of human feeling with circumstances" and that when those circumstances are "social institutions" rather than "the inevitable facts oflife" a problem play ensues. 34 Frederick S. Boas first applied the term to Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well and Troilus

30 Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies ofMaternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest (New York: Routledge, 1992). 31 Alison Findlay, A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); Alice Arnott Oppen, Shakespeare: Listening to the Women (Adelaide: Seaview Press, 2000). 32 Dympna Callaghan, ed., A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). "Part Six: Religion" has only two articles, on The Merchant of Venice and Romeo and Juliet. 33 Hamlet has been the play most often included: by F.S. Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors (New York: C. Scribner, 1896); E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1950); Peter Ure, William Shakespeare: The Problem Plays (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961); William B. Toole, Shakespeare's Problem Plays: Studies in Form and Meaning (The Hague: Mouton, 1966); and Jean-Pierre Maquerlot, Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition: A Reading ofFive Problem Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). Julius Caesar was included by Schanzer and Maquerlot; Antony and Cleopatra by Schanzer only; and Timon ofAthens by Ure. 34 Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Theatre, ed. E.J. West (New York: Crown, 1955), p.180. 13 and Cressida in 1896, writing: "Dramas so singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies. We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem-plays."35

As an author of problem plays himself, it is interesting to look at what Bernard Shaw thought about these plays of Shakespeare's, in which others saw similarities to his own. Although Shaw did not himself apply the term "problem plays" to Shakespeare, he declared himself an admirer of Cressida, Isabella, and particularly Helena, far above the heroines more commonly praised. Cressida he described as "most enchanting" and "Shakespeare's first real woman".36 In The Dark Lady ofthe Sonnets ( a short sketch in support of a national theatre), Shaw depicts Shakespeare himself describing All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure as "two noble and excellent plays setting forth the advancement of women of high nature and fruitful industry ... the one a skilful physician, the other a sister devoted to good works", while disparaging the much more popular Rosalind and Beatrice as fodder for the groundlings. 37

Shaw is very much the exception, however, and almost all other writers who studied these plays as a group before the feminist movement gained influence, including Dowden (1875), Boas (1896), Lawrence (1931), Tillyard (1950), Rossiter (1961), and Ure (also 1961), are in broad agreement about the way to see Isabella and Cressida. 38 The former is initially hard and cold, but learns humanity through the agency of the wise and guiding Duke; the latter is lascivious, treacherous and wanton from first to last. Until well into the 1960s these and other critics for the most part argued only details of the interpretation of these plays: whether Cressida's perfidy should be hated or pitied; whether Troilus was meant to be seen as tragic hero or pathetic foil; whether Isabella should have told her brother more kindly that she would not do what Angelo asked; whether her final speech is a fine or poor example of dramatic rhetoric. Those aspects of the plays relating to sexual politics remained unexamined.

35 Boas, p.345. 36 Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Shakespeare, ed. Edwin Wilson (London: Cassell, 1962), p.186. 37 Bernard Shaw, "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets", The Complete Plays ofBernard Shaw (London: Odhams, 1934), 644-650. 38 Edward Dowden, Shakespeare: A Critical Study ofHis Mind and Art (London: Routledge, 1967 [1875]); F.S. Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors (New York: C. Scribner, 1896); W.W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (London: Macmillan, 1931); E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London: Chatto and Windus, 1950); A.P. Rossiter, Angel With Horns and Other Shakespeare lectures, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961 ); Peter Ure, William Shakespeare: the Problem Plays (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961). 14

Despite having been published some decades ago, W.W. Lawrence and E.M.W. Tillyard are probably still the critics most consistently quoted by others in discussion of Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, and so remain significant. Lawrence was the first to write a book specifically on Measure, All's Well and Troilus, and to label them as the "problem comedies" in the title. Though generally regarded these days as one of the more conservative critics, Lawrence was a pioneer in considering these plays from an historicist perspective. That is, he refutes earlier claims of flaws in the plays by observing that an Elizabethan or Jacobean audience would have brought a different set of values and expectations to a performance, from those of a modem audience. For example, he argues against critics who saw Helena's behaviour in pursuing Bertram as reprehensible by detailing the "clever wench" tradition that allowed the heroine to be active and task-solving. He defends her, however, from a conservative position, in that he is concerned with demonstrating that Helena is really modest and virtuous, making clear his feeling that a woman needs to be modest and virtuous to make a legitimate heroine. He also argues from this perspective that Cressida must be a harlot, because that was her place in the literary tradition of Shakespeare's age, and that Isabella is constructed to be an ideal consort for the Duke, because he would have been recognized as a ruler carrying divine authority. Tillyard was the next to write a book dedicated to the problem plays, though the intervening twenty years gave him no cause to modify Lawrence's viewpoint on their female characters significantly. He restored Hamlet to the list of problem plays, mainly in order to set up a dichotomy between the examples: "Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida are problem plays because they deal with and display interesting problems, All's Well and Measure for Measure because they are problems."39 Tillyard here initiates a long subsequent tradition of employing the term "problem play" without reference to the original definition, seeming instead to take it at face value and discuss what is the "problem" with these plays.

In the early 1960s, works by A.P. Rossiter, Peter Ure and Ernest Schanzer all put forward theories on the nature of a Shakespearean problem play. Schanzer tackles the definition of the problem play, arguing that the label should apply only to Measure for Measure of the original group, coupled with Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar as plays "in which we find a concern with a moral problem which is central to it, presented in such a manner that we are unsure of our moral bearings, so that uncertain and divided responses to it in the minds of the

39 Tillyard, p.2. 15 audience are possible or even probable".40 This means, of course, that he does not examine Cressida, but his discussion of Isabella is noteworthy for its insistence on her essentially unchanging nature, in opposition to the more numerous critics, including Rossiter and Ure, who saw her as "transformed" by the intervention of the Duke.41

While the critics mentioned above were all writing before there had been any work published on the relationship of feminism or sexual politics to Shakespeare, Vivian Thomas provides an example of the continuing tendency among critics of these plays to disregard readings that challenge the conventional. In framing his treatment of these plays in terms of The Moral Universe ofShakespeare's Problem Plays, Thomas sets himself up to make a very specific assessment of their characters from a moral perspective but, despite writing in 1987, after a substantial amount had been published revising the prevailing viewpoints on Isabella and Cressida, the judgement he passes on them does not indicate familiarity with this work. Isabella's actions are once again solely ascribed to sexual repression, Cressida's to innate wantonness.42 Thomas's book highlights an ongoing problem for Shakespeare's feminist critics, that is, it is much less common to be refuted than to be ignored.

There does, indeed, seem to be a significant delay between feminist ideas becoming part of the academic agenda, and the first instances of their application to analysis of the problem plays. Among those who have written on Shakespeare and women or Shakespeare and feminism, a small number have simultaneously engaged with the idea of the problem play, but only since the 1990s. When Richard Hillman wrote on the problem plays in 1993, feminism was not one of his major concerns, but he did suggest that these plays "would seem to be, however, the natural province of forms of poststructural feminism, given the central and pervasive role of sexual politics in the plays' character dynamics", and he acknowledges that "if feminist approaches, among foreseeable future trends, appear to offer the most interesting possibilities for scholarly criticism, they also hold considerable potential for generating innovative versions of the plays onstage".43

40 Ernest Schanzer, Problem Plays ofShakespeare (London: Routledge, 1963), p.6. 41 Schanzer, p.112. The argument against the "transformation" theory is advanced in greater detail by George Geckle, "Shakespeare's Isabella", Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 163-168, and Melvin Seiden, Measure for Measure: Casuisty and Artistry (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990). 42 Vivian Thomas, The Moral Universe ofShakespeare's Problem Plays (London: CroomHelm, 1987). 43 Richard Hillman, William Shakespeare, the Problem Plays (New York: Twayne, 1993), p.148. 16

David McCandless covers much of the territory envisioned by Hillman in his Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies, which assesses the potential of Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida (as well as All's Well That Ends Well) to be staged in a way that will promote an awareness of the gender issues in each. 44 He theorizes about the psychology of the relationships between the men and women in the plays, and makes suggestions for the use of what he calls "feminist gestus". This involves providing a physical representation on stage of the power balances at work between the male and female characters.

Diane Fagan and Poonam Trivedi are two feminist critics who argue, in unpublished theses, that distinguishing Measure, Troilus, and All's Well as the "problem plays" is still useful. Trivedi documents the relationship between Shakespeare's depiction of Cressida, Isabella and Helena, and their equivalents in other literature, and details the influence of pre-feminist patriarchal thought on the moral judgements made on them. 45 Fagan suggests that the three plays are in fact genuinely linked thematically by an "interest in the vexed relationship between individual sexual desire and social cohesion".46 While this certainly holds true for these three plays, such a definition should, by rights, make Antony and Cleopatra a problem play. She also observes that each play has as its "fulcrum" the actual physical exchange of a woman for someone else (Mariana for Isabella, Helena for Diana, Cressida for Antenor).

In his preface to an anthology of criticism of Measure for Measure, Brian Vickers argues that feminism, so important as a political force ... continues to have a reductive effect in literary criticism. Literary works of the distant past are interpreted solely in terms of current preoccupations, the silencing of the woman, the evils of patriarchy, describing men as misogynistic, expressing their fears of women or anxieties about their own sexuality by trying to control 'the mother'. 47 He perhaps misses the point of the application of feminist theory to Renaissance literature. It is not the goal of feminist theory to illuminate all aspects and themes of the work, rather to

44 David Mccandless, Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997). 45 Poonam Trivedi, "Problem Plays, Problem Women: Feminist Contexts" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham, I 988). 46 Diane Fagan, "The Dark House and the Detested Wife: Sex, Marriage and the Dissolution of Comedy in Shakespeare's Problem Plays" (unpublished Masters thesis, University of Montreal, 1997), p.15. 47 Brian Vickers, General Editor's Preface to Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition: Measure for Measure, ed. George L. Geckle (London: Athalone, 2001 ), p.xxx. 17 point out that no reading is complete when it ignores the perspective of half the population. It does not claim that a play is only about the situation of women within it, but that it is necessary to include an examination of its position on women to make an informed judgement on what the play is about. His mention of"the mother" suggests a deliberate swipe at Adelman, whose Suffocating Mothers is an influential feminist text, with the specific goal of identifying imagery of anxieties relating to maternal origin in Shakespeare's later plays. More crucially, his summary of the nature of feminist literary criticism is itself reductive, ignoring both those like Gay, McCandless and Rutter who work in the area of performance analysis, and those like Findlay, Okerlund and Oppen who combine feminism with new historicism to establish a context for the actions of female characters.48

These two last approaches (performance analysis and new historicism) can be fruitfully blended, in a way that forms the basis for much of this dissertation. One facet of the new historicists' approach is to seek out the missing context of a play in order to improve the understanding of its references - immensely valuable for these two plays, so full of shared cultural clues for the Jacobean audience. Acknowledging the imperfect nature of such an attempt, however, is of benefit to the performance analyst: in knowing that a play written in the seventeenth century will never mean the same thing to a current audience as it did to its original, the practitioner's obligation is solely to create a useful meaning for the current audience. The insistence of new historicism that the original or implicit meaning of a text is unreclaimable is liberating for the theatre practitioner, in that it frees the artist from obligation to the received notion of what the performance should be. Observations by critics that some production or another is "not Shakespeare"49 are fatuous, as there is no proof that any interpretation is not what Shakespeare intended, except to say that no modem production is. As Elizabeth Schafer characterized this matter for some directors: "Any modem production of a Shakespeare play has to be a radical reworking, why not acknowledge this and use his plays as the raw material for a personal commentary on contemporary issues?"50 There are points where new historicism and feminism have proved incompatible, chiefly in the emphasis of

48 Alison Findlay, A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999); Arlene N. Okerlund, "In Defence ofCressida: Character as Metaphor", Women's Studies, 7 (1980), 1-17; Alice Arnott Oppen, Shakespeare: Listening to the Women (Adelaide: Seaview Press, 2000). 49 Barbara Hodgdon, describing an audience reaction to Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream ("Parallel Practices, or the Un-Necessary Difference", The Kenyon Review, n.s., 7 (1985), 57-65, p.57), but variants on this ghrase are still common in newspaper reviews. 0 Schafer, p.4. 18 some new historicism on political systems that do not adequately reflect the participation of women in society, and which may privilege political power relations over gender power relations, but this does not diminish its usefulness as an analytical tool.

A performance, of course, provides the opportunity to either reinforce or challenge conventional interpretations, and performance analysis has had a profound influence on the development of changes in the interpretation of Isabella and Cressida. A vital element in assessing performance is the fact that directorial choices create the internal reality of a play. That is, someone reading the text has the opportunity to form an opinion on whether Cressida or Isabella is enjoying the advances of Achilles or Angelo, but someone watching a production is, in effect, being told whether this Cressida or this Isabella is, or is not. As Barbara Hodgdon theorizes, a performance is really less like the text of a play than like an essay on a playtext.51 When critics include an assumption about the manner in which a line would be delivered in their interpretation, they can be accused of begging the question: presenting as evidence something that itself can be seen in different ways. A reviewer is presented with an extra layer of what is there to see. A director decides what should be seen. The blurring of these lines results in a common fault in critical scholarship: the tabling of what amounts to a directorial interpretative decision as evidence of the implicit meaning of the play. By examining moments such as these in the light of the alternatives that have been tested in production, the performance histories of these plays can yield a great deal of information about what aspects of characterization have been questioned at different times. Central to this is keeping in perspective which characters' word is presented in a manner to be taken for the truth, or what some might consider the authorial voice. For example, Cressida's lines expressing her reticence, and Ulysses' lines describing her forwardness contradict one another. A critic must present other evidence from the text in order to decide which of the two is speaking more "truthfully"; a reviewer will be observing a decision, one way or the other, that has already been made; while a director is able to instruct his or her actors to deliver the lines as if from sincere or ulterior motives.

As performance analysis gained prominence as an important component of Shakespearean critical theory, writing about Isabella and Cressida underwent a shift in understanding. The first written opinion of Cressida to run counter to the accepted notion of her unproblematic

51 Hodgdon, "Parallel Practices". 19 wantonness (since Shaw) came, interestingly, from a theatre practitioner. Joseph Papp, whose productions of Shakespeare in New York's Central Park have always been socially as well as artistically challenging, wrote of his experiences in directing the play in a 1965 New York production that no less than revolutionized the interpretation of the role. He identified lines in the text that indicate Cressida's sense that Troilus has betrayed her, was the first to acknowledge the evidence of Cressida's lack of complicity in the kissing games of the Greek generals, and reported discussions with his actors regarding the complexity of the conflicting moral pressures on Cressida in her scene with Diomedes.52 Also in 1965, Jan Kott wrote of Cressida from a socio-psychological perspective, seeing her as a girl who has grown up amid war and betrayal, aware of the need to protect herself.53 The first examination oflsabella's position from the point of view of sexual politics and the sexual harassment trap for women was probably not until 1988 and Carol Rutter's Clamorous Voices, although the influence of the feminist movement was apparent since Charles Marowitz's adaptation in the 1970s presented an Isabella who was the victim of unambiguous sexual violence. 54 So for Isabella, as well as Cressida, the most dramatic changes in the way they have been interpreted have been driven by examination of the performance process, rather than by literary criticism.

Feminism, being such a large and diverse theoretical field, will never produce a consensus of opinion on Shakespeare. Cultural feminists and materialist feminists, natural opponents on so many issues, may both be inclined to dismiss his work as a stronghold of patriarchal and/or elitist values, while certain liberal feminists might argue otherwise. Like other marginalized groups dealing with the white male canon, women have responded in widely varying ways to their need to find an alternative viewpoint on Shakespeare's works. Some believe in moving on from the canon entirely, on the grounds that there is no window into the text that allows a woman her own perspective. Kathleen McLuskie argues against a feminist's right to participate fully in the pleasure offered by one of Shakespeare's plays, by pointing out that his works were written by a man, "products of an entertainment industry which, as far as we know, had no women shareholders, actors, writers or stage hands".55 Under these circumstances, McLuskie believes that feminist criticism

52 Joseph Papp, "Directing Troi/us and Cressida", in The Festival Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 23-72. 53 Jan Kott, Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1965). 54 Charles Marowitz, The Marowitz Shakespeare (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1978), 181-225. 55 Kathleen McLuskie, "The Patriarchal Bard", in Political Shakespeare, ed. John Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1985), 88-108, p.92. 20

is restricted to exposing its own exclusion from the text. It has no point of entry into it, for the dilemmas of the narrative and the sexuality under discussion are constructed in completely male terms ... and the women's role as the objects of exchange within that system of sexuality is not at issue, however much a feminist might want to draw attention to it. Thus when a feminist accepts the narrative, theatrical and intellectual pleasures of this text she does so in male terms and not as part of the locus of feminist critical activity. 56

McLuskie's point applies to the reader, the watcher, but also to the player of Shakespeare. Even when a woman is playing one of these roles written for boys, her perspective on that role will not necessarily be the privileged viewpoint, in competition with that of the director and the more numerous male actors, and feminism is unlikely to be a production's default position. A feminist performance could be regarded as one that privileges the perspective of the female characters as subjects in their own right, rather than as objects constructed by the male observer. Some, like McLuskie, would argue that this can never be done with a text written by a man, others that strategies do exist that make this possible, provided an awareness of gender power issues is maintained when interpretative decisions are being made. McLuskie undeniably has a point that a text will inevitably be shaped by the system that produced it, but she may be underestimating the potential of performance to render behaviour the subject of criticism and debate. That is, the actions of a character in a play will not necessarily be received by an audience uncritically, and can provoke questioning, rather than confirmation, of the status quo. For example, the role of the woman as an object of exchange in plays from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to The Two Noble Kinsmen, let alone The Taming ofthe Shrew, is likely to appear disquieting to some members of a modem audience, and even the theatrical pleasure of the comedy this produces will provide many points of reflection, and possibly discussion.

There is an alternative position that holds that women have a right to the best theatrical writing, and that these texts can be opened up to new ways of reading them, provided that women are granted the power to bring their own perspective to the work. Nicholas Radel responds to McLuskie's argument: "I see McLuskie as being correct when she argues that Measure for Measure develops a masculine perspective that is historically contingent, partial

56 McLuskie, pp.97-98. 21 and different from our own. I think she is wrong, however, to assume that we must accept that perspective as in some way final." 57

In addition, Shakespeare's theatre had women audience members; and Shakespeare had a mother, a wife, daughters and (very possibly) lovers. It does not inevitably follow that because a play is written and performed by men that these men are uninterested in depicting women in a manner that transcends stereotypes, only that this depiction will be from the point of view of a man. If he is a clever man, with an understanding of the women he knows, there is no reason why he should not show women something about themselves. There is also no reason why women should not have insight to bring to a man's writing that will add to its potential for rewarding performance. Juliet Fleming discusses this perspective in "The Ladies' Shakespeare", quoting Maya Angelou, who famously remarked "William Shakespeare was a black woman," for he had marvellously understood and written about her "outcast" state. Angelou produced this witty formulation by extending two assumptions that she expected her audience to share: that Shakespeare's empathy reached into every subject position, and that his work can properly be appropriated in order to give voice to such opinions. 58

If Shakespeare's women on stage have appeared to be limited in their depth and variety, it may have less to do with the way they were written, and more with the way they have been interpreted by critics and directors who were uninterested in women's points of view. To make an assessment of characters like Isabella and Cressida from a feminist point of view, however, it is first necessary to disengage from a dominant body of criticism that either ignored, subsumed or attacked the written female figure as subject. Until recently, performance, as well as criticism, assumed that the observer's point of view was male, and shaped itself accordingly.

This may have much to do with where in the production process creative power rests. In the modern theatre, the position of greatest artistic influence on a production is the director's. Though regional theatres in Britain and North America have staged Measure for Measure with a female director at the helm, Britain's highest-profile theatre companies, the RSC and the

57 Nicholas Radel, "Reading as a Feminist", in Theory in Practice: Measure/or Measure, ed. Nigel Wood (Bristol: Open University Press, 1996), 90-132, p.108. 58 Juliet Fleming, "The Ladies Shakespeare", in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, 3-20, p.18. 22

Royal National Theatre, have never placed direction of the play in female hands, and nor have any of Australia's state theatre companies. I have been able to find only two examples of Troilus and Cressida being directed by a woman in North America, and none in Britain or Australia.59 The significance of this is that the director's is always the first eye observing a production - the first audience. For the productions of these plays that are watched by the largest audiences, that first eye continues to be male.

For the actor playing Isabella or Cressida, the rehearsal process may not be an encouraging environment in which to explore a challenging interpretation of her role. Shakespearean plays usually have large numbers of speaking roles, but generally no more than four of these will be female parts. If the director and other key artistic staff are male, the dominance of men in the rehearsal room will be unavoidable. Cressida does not appear with another woman in any of her scenes, so the actor playing her may almost always be the only woman present. As Fiona Shaw puts it, "You are often alone. You are often the only woman in the room. It's an old refrain but it goes on being a relevant state that affects the performances we ultimately give. Men don't experience it, so they never have to deal with it."60

Shaw was talking specifically about the situation at the RSC, where many female practitioners with a desire to change the dominance of the masculine viewpoint within this company's creative process have found the politics at work to be crippling, and the principle of reliance on the text to be largely a myth. Sarah Werner spoke to women who had tried to work with the company system, and use what they saw in Shakespeare's text within the conventional rehearsal process, and concluded that the difficulty of the goal of blending your truth with Shakespeare's is that most directors and producers recognize only specific values as 'Shakespearean' ... Received notions of Shakespeare's female characters can obscure feminist reinterpretations, with unquestioned assumptions about women's behaviour replacing textual enquiry and standing in for assertions of universality. 61

59 Libby Appel for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1984, and Barbara Gaines for the Chicago Repertory in 1987 and 1994. 60 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.xvii. 61 Werner, pp.30-31. 23

Although this is a specific case study, a number of the issues involved, such as the structures that reinforce the status quo, and the influence of financial considerations, can be extrapolated to any major theatre company that relies to some degree on public funding, the tourist market, or notions of a prestigious history to live up to. The problem for the feminist lies not in the text itself, but in the bestowing of the power to interpret it.

Whether or not one is convinced of the potential for successful feminist readings of the plays of Shakespeare, it is indisputable that they are still being performed, and women are performing in them, watching them, discussing them, analysing them and (less often) directing them. It is therefore important to explore what their value can be as a basis for performance, for those who seek to work with both early modem texts and feminist ideology. Schafer, again, sums up the matter: Given the very large amounts of money spent in Britain each year on Shakespeare productions, it is important that women should continue to direct Shakespeare, and to question the misogyny enshrined in his plays, rather than leaving these plays to directors who will endorse the misogyny and anti-feminism of the early modem period. 62 This is no less true for other parts of the world. What is there in these texts for the feminist theatre practitioner or audience member who still believes that there is valuable material in Shakespeare, and that the limited nature of his female characters has less to do with the texts, than with the way they have been interpreted? It is possible to argue that it is not necessary to distort or ignore aspects of the text in order to find a reading that is commensurate with changes in political and sociological thought. Rather, feminism enables textual material to be read in a new way. In the characters oflsabella and Cressida, Shakespeare provides the modem audience member or theatrical practitioner with material that is responsive to a feminist sensibility, as long as the other aspects of the production provide a sympathetic context. The main purpose of this thesis is to survey the changes that have occurred in attitudes to these characters, and to examine the attempts that have been made to stage these changes, as well as any impediments there may have been to doing so.

By external warrants Isabella and Cressida are as different as two women can be, and have been treated as such by centuries of critics. Ironically, these critics themselves demonstrate

62 Schafer, p.6. 24 that they share a special ability among Shakespeare's female characters: the power to divide. The debates arising from this division, which often centre on discussions of motive for actions, and make moral judgements on the characters, were hampered until recently by the persistent influence of a refusal to concede the realities of male power. The generals' all kissing Cressida is described as an action that is her choice and her fault, despite the fact that a lone woman surrounded by enemy soldiers is hardly in a decision-making position. No difference is acknowledged in Isabella's situation between consensual sex with someone you like, and forced sex with someone in power - the argument becomes entirely about whether she is sexually repressed. These are examples of situations where critics have been prepared to embellish the evidence of the text in order to justify their perception of these characters as unattractive or immoral, rather than confront lines that fail to support, or may even flatly contradict, their assessment. Many directors have also taken the same approach.

An immoral proposition is put to Isabella; she says no, and is called hysterical, vain, cold, unfeeling, inhuman. 63 Cressida is made an immoral proposition and says yes, and is called a wanton, a whore, a degraded slut.64 It would seem on the surface that there is no viable alternative for a woman, but the difference in the circumstances of these two characters itself creates a similarity between them. In both cases the heroine takes the path that is best for her own survival and well-being, in opposition to that asked of her by the man with whom she shares the closest bond. Both make an attempt to regain some control of their fates for themselves when men would seek to take it from them. Both these plays have a political element that is closely linked with matters of sexual politics. A woman's ownership of her own body is something we now take for granted, in Western society. Just the reverse of this, however, was taken for granted before the twentieth century. Such a shift in something so

63 "A vicious sex hysteric", Edward Bond, programme notes for Measure for Measure (RSC, 1974); "hysterical", J.W. Lever, introduction to Measure for Measure (London: Methuen, 1965), p.lxxx; "the hysteria with which she responds to Angelo", Adelman, p.96; "it is her vanity ... that she is defending", David Lloyd Stevenson, The Achievement ofShakespeare's Measure for Measure (New York: Ithaca, 1966), p.45; "lacks human feeling", "a fiend", G.Wilson Knight, The Wheel ofFire (London: Methuen, 1930), p.92; "inhuman coldness", "icy prude", Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), pp.196, 216. 64 "So incorrigible a coquette and wanton", O.J. Campbell, Comical/ Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino: Huntington, 1938), p.215; "she is the wanton of tradition", L.C.Knights, Some Shakespearean Themes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1959), p.79; "the romantic idealist falls in love with a whore", Robert Ornstein, Discussions ofShakespeare's Problem Comedies (Boston: Heath, 1961), p.31; "far more base than her nearest counterpart, Doll Tearsheet, because Doll makes no attempt to conceal the fact that she is a whore", Pitt, p.146; "a slut", Alice Walker, introduction to Troi/us and Cressida (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1957), p.xxii; "brassy and degraded slut", Daniel Seltzer, introduction to Troilus and Cressida (New York: Signet, 1963), p.xxxi; "evident and disgusting sluttishness", Alan Bloom, Shakespeare on Love and Friendship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p.100. As for Isabella, this is only a representative selection. 25 fundamental could not help but influence the treatment of any material that deals with women in a sexual context. While most of Shakespeare's plays involve romance or coupling of some kind, it is less common to find examples where women's bodies are treated as items of commercial exchange (Pericles also does so, and to some degree The Taming ofthe Shrew and The Two Noble Kinsmen, though both these last operate within the marriage market, where it is difficult to define where commercial exchange begins and ends). Isabella is asked to provide her body in exchange for her brother's pardon. She, at least, is asked, in contrast to Cressida, who is exchanged bodily for the prisoner of war Antenor without her consultation or consent.

Isabella in Measure for Measure and Cressida in Troilus and Cressida demonstrate the influence of the feminist movement and other shifts in Western society's preoccupations on performance and interpretation, perhaps more than any other of Shakespeare's characters. They bring to the fore some of the most complex and sensitive questions of sexual politics with which we will ever need to deal. Is representing sexism accurately sexist or a challenge to sexism? Is it inevitably a betrayal of someone else for a woman to protect herself? How far is the world prepared to hold a woman responsible for a man's actions towards her? These are the plays that turn on sexual politics at their most brutal and least romanticized so, as sexual politics moved onto the agenda of public debate, assumptions about the meaning of the plays were confronted, and the motives of some earlier critics began to be questioned by later ones. Aspects of their characters that once appeared unnerving or distasteful have become challenging and even admirable. In recent years it seems that Isabella and Cressida as characters have begun to be explored in criticism and performance at a level of complexity not previously considered, and insight into the power structures of sexual relations has at times had a profound effect on staging. This study reflects on the re-examination of these characters in performance, and attempts to place it within the context of changes in critical thought, to see just how much subversive power these most unruly of women can potentially hold.

II: Isabella's Choice

In theatrical currency, love and marriage are the blue chip stocks and the tested gold bullion. What more disruptive figure, then, is it possible to conceive than a heroine with no interest in romance? Measure for Measure has most often throughout its history been seen as distasteful due to the sordidness of its plot, its explicit discussion of sexual matters, its insufficiently punished villain, and everybody's questionable motives. This restricted its potential for performance, and also caused many literary critics some significant spiritual pain. Isabella's refusal to be bartered and, perhaps more importantly, her absolute refusal to treat men as if they are the most important thing in the world, is so outrageously radical that every means available has been employed to deflect, reduce, neutralize or trivialize the threat she poses. When Penny Gay discerns, in Barry Kyle's production, "the force majeure which declares that men's experience is important and meaningful, women's merely the product of hysteria and ignorance about the real world", 1 her observation is applicable far beyond this single example, and could be summing up the majority of interpretations of Isabella, both critical and performative. Kathleen McLuskie feels that this quality is inherent in the text: "Isabella, for all her importance in the play, is similarly defined theatrically by the men around her for the men in the audience",2 but perhaps this impression arises only because most productions have sought to curtail rather than celebrate her more challenging aspects.

The history of Measure for Measure in performance is complex and unusual. Unlike some other plays from Shakespeare's middle period, it never disappeared completely from the stage, but was performed sporadically, and was generally seen as too dark, too distasteful and too ambiguous to become really popular. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, such characteristics were precisely those that became most fashionable in the theatre, and the play began to look remarkably modem. Indeed, Measure for Measure displays all the complexity, ambiguity and multiplicity of a Bosch painting, and in a similar way it is possible to be familiar with the play, and to have known it for a long time, and yet to find new elements on each encounter. It is now performed much more

1 Penny Gay, As She Likes It: Shakespeare's Unruly Women (London: Routledge, 1994), p.136. 2 Kathleen McLuskie, "The Patriarchal Bard", in Political Shakespeare, ed. John Dollimore & Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1985), 88-108, p.96. 27 frequently that at any other period in history, and is staged by the RSC as often as some of the most traditionally popular plays, such as Hamlet.

The earliest production mentioned here will be Peter Brook's of 1950, and the most recent, Simon Phillips's production for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2000. It is possible to detect, as the productions progress chronologically, certain changes in the presentation of Isabella, some of which operate in tandem with changes in that of other characters, notably the Duke. Things once assumed became questioned. The way Isabella has been presented on stage has, at times, demonstrated the influence of feminism, but not in any direct or linear developmental fashion. Instead, as people began to read male-female relationships in different ways, productions began to depict a whole range of different power relationships between the characters, giving a variety of perspectives on the same material. The focus often shifted, and the text itself was sometimes restructured or embellished to emphasize different aspects of the story. Some directors, such as Charles Marowitz, deconstructed the material. His 1970 production re-arranged the text into a collage that examined the sado-masochistic elements of the sexual relationships, and the inevitability of corruption in hierarchical power. To this end he made radical changes to the story: Isabella did comply with Angelo's demand, Claudio was beheaded, and the Duke was a co conspirator.3 Others, like David McCandless and Michael Bogdanov, inserted silent prologues to foreground the themes they found important. Bogdanov showed the Duke participating in a kind of sado-masochistic orgy, while McCandless began his production with an auction of whores intended to illustrate the commodification of the female body.4

Isabella's personal critical history is more involved than that of Cressida, and more contradictory. Certainly, no other of Shakespeare's characters has prompted such widely varied responses, with critics tending either to praise or condemn immoderately. The influence of the feminist movement on the way she has been interpreted has been more subtle than it has on Cressida, and also more strongly characterized by disagreement. There are some who see Isabella's refusal of Angelo and Claudio's demands as coming

3 Charles Marowitz, The Marowitz Shakespeare (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1978), 181-225. 4 Bogdanov's production discussed in Michael Friedman, "Prostitution and the Feminist Appropriation of Measure for Measure on the Stage", Shakespeare Bulletin (Spring 1997), 14-17; David Mccandless, Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997). 28 from sexual inhibition ("In her flight from sexuality, Isabella resembles Angelo"\ and some who see it as coming from immense strength of character ("It requires as much courage oflsabella to tum a deaf ear to her own tender, sisterly and womanly feelings as to the appeals made by her brother"6). There are those who see Shakespeare as having created a woman of great personal power ("She's wonderful, the most courageous character in the play"\ whilst others regard him as having set up an essentially powerless female character in a position where she is reduced to fetishized object by the gaze of both the male characters in the play and of the audience ("Like Angelo, we are witnesses to Isabella's performance so that we understand, ifwe do not morally approve of, his reaction to it"8).

When the works of Shakespeare began to be analysed according to the principles of new historicism, Measure for Measure was one of the most fruitful fields to plough. The more interpretative applications of the theory have seen in it topical references to the then very new rule of James I, either as glorifying his deity-like leadership, or lampooning his deity like pretensions.9 More generally, new historicism has contributed to the reading of this play in such areas as the clarification of contemporary marriage laws, and the context of virgin-martyr mythology. Historical contextualising, however, can only take the theatrical practitioner so far. It is certain that matters of sexual politics will never appear the same to a present day audience as they did to one of the Renaissance, but audience reactions have never been uniform, and it need not follow that a modem performance that embraces current thinking on sexual politics is doing something inappropriate. The fact that the text of Measure for Measure as it stands can be used to explore ideas only now being fully argued through demonstrates its elasticity and its resilience, and it should be allowed to be all the different things it can be in the modem age. If that includes being a story about the power of women to face down sexual coercion, so much the better- that we cannot know the degree to which it was used this way originally is beside the point. Readings that were

5 Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies ofMaternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest (New York: Routledge, 1992), p.97. 6 Melvin Seiden, Measure for Measure: Casuistry and Artistry (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), p.163. 7 Juliet Stevenson, quoted in Carol Rutter, Clamorous Voices (London: The Women's Press, 1988), p.26. 8 McLuskie, p.96. 9 This aspect is discussed in greatest detail by J.W. Bennett, Measure for Measure as Royal Entertainment (New York: Columbia UP, 1966), and by Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 29 clearly not available to the Jacobeans are still valid both in creating a performance, and seeking insights into modem human relations: "There is no reason why the elusive responses of past audiences need carry privileged status as the ultimate meaning of the text."10

The present discussion will seek to historicize the text only to the extent of clarifying some of the points that appear puzzling to the modem reader, when straightforward explanations do exist. It is more concerned with demonstrating the way the text has been used as either a reductive or an empowering vehicle for a woman playing the role of Isabella. It will also suggest possible readings that are less limiting to her character than those that, in the words of Jacqueline Rose, "alternatively revered and accused her in such a way that her sexual identity has become the site on which dissatisfaction with the play, and disagreement about the play, have tumed". 11 To that end, some ideas will be proffered that pertain to elements oflsabella's character unrelated to her relationships with men or sex, to test against those interpretations that seem to rely on these aspects too exclusively, and to investigate what areas of the text such a shift in emphasis will open up.

Of the productions discussed here, Peter Brook's is the earliest, and has probably had the longest influence on subsequent productions. It was highly lauded for its power and its refusal to shy away from the darker side of the text, still a novelty in 1950. The design located the play in an early medieval period, and there was much emphasis on ragged lowlife, with chains and visible instruments of torture in the dungeon-like gaol. 12 Barbara Jefford's costume exemplified a common design compromise between dressing Isabella in secular and convent garb. She wore a plain dress and a veil that indicated, but did not strictly constitute, a habit (see fig. 1). When Margaret Johnston played the role for Anthony Quayle in 1956 and Judi Dench for John Blatchley in 1962, many of Brook's cuts and blocking notes survived intact. 13 Both these productions used a Renaissance design

10 McLuskie, p.94. 11 Jacqueline Rose, "Sexuality in the Reading of Shakespeare: Hamlet and Measure for Measure", in Alternative Shakespeares, ed. John Drakakis (London: Methuen, 1985), 95-118, p.103. 12 Descriptions of set and costume are taken from the archival videos for RSC productions since 1983, and, for earlier productions, from production photographs, all held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. Descriptions of costumes for Australian productions are largely taken from illustrations accompanying newspaper reviews. 13 Prornptbooks: Brook production 1950; Quayle production 1956; Blatchley production 1962. All held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. Fig. l

Fig. 2

Fig. I : Barbara Jefford as Isabella, 1950. Fig. 2: Judi Dench, 1% 2, showing similarities to Jefford's costume, though her cloak hides the more revealing neckline. 30 period, with Johnston in a nun's habit, while Dench employed a different kind of compromise from Jefford, wearing a Renaissance gown coupled with a rather monastic hooded robe (fig. 2). The question of the degree to which Isabella's novitiate state is emphasized by costume will be the first production decision to affect the audience's impression of her, and there has been disagreement about her precise status. Claudio says to Lucio, "This day my sister should the cloister enter, / And there receive her approbation" (1.2.167-168). 14 Isabella appears to be about to begin her period as a novice, rather than about to be fully professed as a nun as, in her first scene, she is being instructed by a nun on rules applying to her order; rules that she would know if she was about to complete her study. On the other hand, Angelo's servant introduces her with "One Isabel, a sister, desires access to you" (11.4.18), indicating that she is wearing something that distinguishes her as belonging to a religious order. Novices did, and do, wear garments that are different from those they will wear after taking their vows, yet are still a religious uniform, but a Jacobean audience, living some decades after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, may have had only vague notions of the differences between nuns' and novices' habits. Modem directors have generally seemed little interested in such precise matters, when making costume decisions. Early in the twentieth century, William Poel refused to dress Isabella as a nun, pointing out that, as a novice, Isabella does not have a right to the garments of one fully professed, and believing that the Duke could not possibly address his suit to a woman so attired. 15 Some later directors, however, seem to have found something they need in the image.

The RSC's next production (after Blatchley's) of Measure was directed by John Barton in 1970, and did display some signs of feminist influence, at a time when the political movement was starting to take shape. Estelle Kohler's costume was secular, but austere. In a production design that was stylized rather than aiming for any accurate representation of period, but was nominally late medieval, there was something about Isabella's appearance (the hairstyle, the neckline and fabric of the gown) that said 1970 much more than 1470, but whether this was deliberate or not it is impossible to say. She may have been meant to appear a modem woman trapped in an archaic world (see fig. 3).

14 All quotes are from the Arden edition, ed. J.W. Lever (London: Methuen, 1965). 15 Graham Nicholls, Text and Performance: Measure for Measure (London: Macmillan, 1986), p.76. ;; r ' )

~ f f I ? 'l

Fi g. 4 Fig. 5

Fig. 3: Este ll e Kohler, 1970, faces Angelo a nd the Vi ennese court in Y. I. Fig. 4: Francesca A nnis, a more glamorous Isabell a, with Angelo, 1974. Fig. 5: Paola Dioni sotti , w impled, 1978. 31

Barry Kyle in 1978 was the first RSC director since Quayle to put Isabella in a full nun's habit and wimple (fig. 5), and she was presented throughout as taking her stance out of obvious sexual repression. As Paola Dionisotti put it: "We were all pretty busy being promiscuous in 1978. There wasn't an awful lot of sympathy around for chastity."16 The sexual revolution was not kind to a character who could say "more than our brother is our chastity" (11.4.184 ). The costume emphasized the repression the director perceived in the character. She discarded the wimple on hearing of Claudio's death, and it was a liberating gesture. The overall production design was based on the seventeenth-century civil war period, to reflect the tension in that period between the hedonistic cavaliers and the repressed puritans, and was fairly naturalistic.

In Australia's production history of the play, it is Rex Cramphom who had the longest association with it, directing productions in 1973, 1980, 1985 and 1988. Cramphom put all his Isabellas in nuns' habits, emphasizing his primary concern with the play as a vehicle for moral debate. The appearance of Isabella was a constant, in otherwise widely varied production styles, including, in his 1988 version, the use of huge screens on which key scenes and images were projected, to challenge any sense of naturalism, and to emphasize the breakdown between public and private behaviour and the voyeurism of the audience.

More secular Isabellas have included Francesca Annis in 1974 and Juliet Stevenson in 1983, who each wore long, black dresses of rich fabric and myriad sequins (see fig. 4 and fig. 6). A decision like this will emphasize the fact that becoming a nun was a reasonable prospect for a girl of good family and fortune, and did not necessarily bespeak repression, or complete rejection of the world. It brings into question, however, the nature of the "more strict restraints" (1.4.4) that Isabella wishes imposed on the convent. At what point is she planning to give up couture? Keith Hack's 1974 production was set in a mixed, mainly Jacobean, but somewhat fantastical period. Isabella's dress displayed seventeenth century styling in an exaggerated form. This one-step removal from historical accuracy, and the slight grotesqueness it carried with it, was there to fuel a Brechtian questioning of the characters' actions. In this production, Isabella and Mariana swapped dresses after IV .1, removing the Isabella of the final act from any impression of the convent, clothing her in outlandish pink and orange, with golden tassels. Adrian Noble's (1983) was set in

16 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.29. Fig. 7

Fig. 6: Juliet Stevenson, with the Duke, 1983. Fig. 7: Josette Simon, 1987. In also casting a black Claudio, Hytner invited inferences that the characters were racia ll y victimized. 32 the eighteenth century, a period when ostentatious show was an indispensable part of the upper-class lifestyle, highlighting the reliance on appearance, and consequent shallowness, of most of the characters.

Nick Enright's production for the Sydney Theatre Company in 1985 was infused more with intellectual than with visceral passion. The thrust stage of the Wharf Theatre brought the actors close to the audience, but the production used an abstracted, metallic set that, at times, was difficult for them to negotiate. In a 1920s setting, Susan Lyons' s grey dress and veil were reminiscent of a nurse's uniform, though she changed in the fifth act into a skirt and blouse that were still conservative, but less stiff.

Only a few directors and designers have attempted to transfer the setting of the play to the later twentieth century. There seems to be a sense that the conservative moral laws of the Vienna represented in the play are incompatible with a modem society. An exception was Nicholas Hytner, whose 1987 production worked within a mixed and indeterminate period. Trench-coats and some suits suggested mid-twentieth century, the prison looked very recent, with metallic surfaces and fluorescent light, but certain attendants looked more Victorian. Josette Simon wore a navy dress, mid-calf length, in a much plainer cut and fabric than most previous Isabellas. Her hair was covered by a dark veil that was more like a scarf than a habit (see fig. 7). Her look was severe, but more from the sense of personal authority she carried, than from any religious signifiers in her costume, and all the male characters seemed somewhat in awe of her. The world created was both sordid and vicious, and Simon was left, in the words of The Times, "the only nobly uncorrupted figure on stage". 17

The RSC gave three productions of the play in the 1990s. Trevor Nunn's small-scale rendering with Claire Skinner at The Other Place in 1991 was set in the Edwardian period, in a production claustrophobic with props. A young and angelic Skinner wore a sensible, schoolgirl-style, black smock and boots, which made Angelo look like a child molester - but unfortunately had much the same effect on the bearded and bespectacled Duke. The smaller space made the drama much more intimate and personal than many previous versions, which, along with the chosen period, went hand in hand with an emphasis on a

11 The Times, 13 November 1987. 33

Freudian psychology for the characters. In Stephen Pimlott's 1994 production, Stella Gonet wore a light-coloured, long, plain dress, but changed into a man's suit for the final scene, which was a clever stratagem, as it looked simultaneously conservative and challenging in a courtroom filled with men (fig. 8). Her very curly hair was always tied back, but escaping from its bonds. The RSC's most recent production was in 1998, with Clare Holman playing the role for Michael Boyd, in a high-necked habit and veil (fig. 9). This version was accurately costumed in the period of the Russian revolution, though the set was much less naturalistic. The designer saw this period as having numerous resonances: The turn of the last century was a time of rapid technological development and political unrest, old empires were crumbling and about to be overthrown with new socialist regimes, especially in Eastern Europe. We felt the early stages of the Russian revolution offered a strong parallel to the play ... The revolutionary setting should create strong political tensions in the piece: the Duke could be shot by Angelo in the same way that the Russian revolutionaries executed the Tsar. 18 Staged in the vast space of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, with a staircase sweeping up at the back, and a hole downstage into which another staircase disappeared beneath the stage, implying a Dantesque heaven-earth-hell hierarchy, the only furnishing that interrupted the empty expanse was the occasional chair. This scale and austerity was mimicked in the playing style, as the characters rarely touched, or demonstrated emotional connections with one another by physical action.

If there is any discernible trend in costuming Isabella it is that the more recent the production, the more likely she is to be habited. The 1998 production at the RSC and the 2000 MTC production directed by Simon Phillips, as well as numerous American productions of the last five years, all put Isabella in a full habit, the RSC and MTC choosing the traditional white of the poor Clares. I have not encountered a costume design that does not include a crucifix, even in the more modern-dress productions. Perhaps it is an attempt to render indisputable how violating Angelo's behaviour is, now we are

18 Designer Tom Piper, quoted in Maria Evans, The RSC Interactive Education Pack: Measure for Measure (RSC, 1998), p.8. Fig. 8

Fig. 9 I ...,._ -----=-----

Fig. 8: Stell a Gonet, 1994, with Mari ana in V. I, showing Pimlott's use of a crowd of extras. Fig. 9: Clare Holman as Isabell a, 1998. 34 operating in a society where the boundaries of acceptable sexual behaviour vary so greatly from person to person.

The ancient nature of the "monstrous ransom"19 theme, upon which this play is based, demonstrates how long such questions have troubled human society, as much as the answers have differed. The earliest version is attributed to St Augustine, but more direct sources of Shakespeare's play are Cinthio and Whetstone, who each wrote a novella and a play on the theme. These sources are mainly useful in making clear which elements of Measure for Measure Shakespeare invented himself. The similarities are of only passing interest; the differences are crucial. Isabella is neither the instigator nor the concluder of the action, but the pivot around which it turns. In the St Augustine version of the story a wife gives herself to a man in return for a bag of gold to pay her husband's debt to a judge. She does not give herself to the judge, which removes the bribery element and makes her action more like conventional prostitution. While Cinthio and Whetstone both make use of the corrupt judge, each has the equivalent of Isabella succumb to the demand of the equivalent of Angelo, and then marry him, not the equivalent of the Duke. With the introduction of the refusal, the bed trick and the heroine as a novice nun, Shakespeare has gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to divert the story from its original simple path where a woman's wrongs could be redressed by marrying her to her abuser.

Shakespeare only rarely ventured into the tragicomic genre, which underlies the structure of this play. In centring on a figure from the nobility, the Duke of the state of Vienna, and in putting several characters in mortal danger, the play fulfils the requirements of Italianate tragicomedy, in its use of tragedy's "great characters, but not its great action", as well as the "happy reversal" common in comedy, and employment of"danger, not death".20 Although the Duke's is by far the largest part, his actions are shaped by the clever artifice of comedy, rather than the grand designs of tragedy. Hoping to get the licentiousness of his city under control, he hands over the powers of government to Angelo, a man who "doth rebate and blunt his natural edge / With profits of the mind, study and fast" (1.4.60- 61 ), and tells everyone that he is travelling to Poland for an unspecified time. Instead he disguises himself as a friar ( a comic device that appears in several plays of the period), and

19 This phrase was coined by Mary Lascelles, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (London: Athlone, 1953). 20 Seventeenth-century dramatic theorist, Guarini, quoted in Lever, p.lxi. 35 stays in Vienna to observe what happens. The first thing that Angelo does is close all the brothels and arrest a young nobleman called Claudio, under an archaic law governing moral behaviour. He has got his betrothed pregnant, and according to the letter of the law this is a crime punishable by death. This is where Isabella is drawn into the plot, as Claudio sends to his sister, and asks her to go to Angelo and plead for his life to be spared. Isabella is about to enter a convent, so her re-entering the world of politics and men is presented as a matter of some moment. She does plead for Claudio to Angelo, and to such profound effect that Angelo, "whose blood/ Is very snow-broth" (1.4.57-58), is overcome with lust for her, and declares that he will only remit Claudio's sentence if she agrees to sleep with him.

Isabella goes to Claudio to tell him of Angelo's corruption. To her astonishment, Claudio begs her to accept the offer and save his life. We now come to the first point that has been difficult for audiences and critics to accept, because Isabella not only refuses, but upbraids Claudio mercilessly for his lack of courage and moral backbone. Fortunately, the disguised Duke overhears their conversation and takes matters in hand. Praising Isabella for her goodness, he tells her of a jilted betrothed of Angelo's who would be willing to go in her place to Angelo's bed, and trick him into thinking he has got what he wanted. Then Claudio would be spared, and afterwards the truth could be revealed and Angelo made to do the right thing by Mariana. Isabella agrees to this plan, and it is put into action, but the next day Angelo, fearing possible revenge from Claudio, sends orders for his execution anyway. In an increasingly complex series of contrivances, the Duke arranges for Claudio to be saved, but tells Isabella that he is dead, giving only as his explanation (to the audience) that he wishes "to make her heavenly comforts of despair/ When it is least expected" (IV.3.109-110). He then publicly returns to Vienna having, still in his friar's disguise, persuaded the grieving and angry Isabella to seek redress for her wrongs before him. The Duke puts Isabella through a series of public humiliations, whereby she is forced to declare falsely that she succumbed to Angelo, is not believed, and is arrested and removed to prison, before the truth about the Duke's disguise and Angelo's corruption is revealed. The Duke condemns Angelo "to the very block/ Where Claudio stoop'd to death, and with like haste" (V .1.412-413 ). Mariana, who still loves Angelo, pleads that he be spared, and begs Isabella for her help. Isabella kneels and adds her plea for Angelo's 36 life. The "happy reversal" is then fully effected, as the Duke reveals that Claudio is alive, pardons everybody, and proposes marriage to Isabella. Her response is not recorded.

It should be obvious, even from the outline above, that Isabella is not a typical romantic heroine, even within the more serious style of the tragicomedy. Her concerns are in no way to do with love or marriage; they are much bigger. Life, death, the soul and redemption are her preoccupations; the nature of truth, seeming and being is her focal point. The only indication in the text of her having feelings for a man is that she loves her brother Claudio very much- "I something do excuse the thing I hate/ For his advantage that I dearly love" (11.4.119-120). At the conclusion of the play, the Duke proposes marriage to her twice, and each time Shakespeare gives her no scripted response. The remarkable openness of a character who is constantly speaking with feeling, but hardly ever about it provides an unparalleled opportunity for directors and actors to find their own sense of the relationships in the play. Marcia Riefer speaks oflsabella's "powerlessness", because she does not control the direction of the plot in the way of many of Shakespeare's more comic heroines: Those heroines who have not actually been in control of the comic action have at least participated in it more actively than Isabella ever does. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, for instance, Helena and Hermia, while admittedly acting within Oberon's master plot, still take the initiative in pursuing their loves, which is certainly not true of Isabella.21 This seems, though, to be less powerlessness than a different kind of power. Helena and Hermia, along with virtually every other of Shakespeare's women, from Rosalind to Lady Macbeth, have been focused on "pursuing their loves". That is, whatever their independence of action, their object is, perpetually and indivisibly, a man. That this is "certainly not true of Isabella" means, not that she is powerless, but that she does not measure her goals in the same terms as these others. Those interpretations of Isabella that focus on whether or not she is attracted to Angelo, or falls in love with the Duke, or is unnatural in not doing either, show an attempt to limit a woman's sphere of action to her relationships, and leave the men to work on life's larger issues. Isabella may not invent the direction of the plot, but at each turning point in the play its direction hangs on her yes or

21 Marcia Riefer, "Instruments of Some More Mightier Member": The Constriction of Female Power in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Quarterly, 35 (1984), 157-169, p.158. 37 no. If that yes or no choice comes out of a moral code, rather than personal inclination, she has indeed usurped a power usually reserved for men.

Characters on stage do not appear in isolation, however, and the way Isabella is seen by an audience will depend on her relationships with those around her, even if a production chooses to emphasize her differences or separation from them. Most important are her relationships with the Duke, and with two other characters, both also men: her brother Claudio, and the Duke's deputy, Angelo (although her relationships with Mariana and Lucio will also tell the audience a great deal). The issues attached to her character, as they seem to have struck observers historically, are whether her refusal to do what Angelo asks is to be admired or condemned, what her harsh treatment of Claudio says about her character, whether her acquiescence in the bed trick reflects on her moral position, and whether the Duke's suggestion that they marry makes sense, and is likely to be welcomed or refused, based on the relationship we have seen them form.

There are several key points in this play where performance decisions will have a powerful role in answering these questions for an audience, and even using the same lines a widely varying effect can be produced. Among these are Isabella's encounters with Angelo, particularly the second, where he makes his immoral proposition to her. Whether or not he is physically violent with her, or indeed, whether he touches her at all, along with the emotions she expresses in response, will influence the audience's sense of whether her almost instant determination to reject Angelo's demand is justified. A lengthy scene with a key part to play in both character and plot development is that which begins with Isabella's confrontation with Claudio, and is immediately followed by the Duke's suggestion to her of the bed trick. How much affection is apparent between Isabella and Claudio, the degree of her anger with him, and then the comparative eagerness or reluctance with which she embraces the Duke's plan will all shape the perception of her character. It is also the first meeting between Isabella and the Duke, so if the production chooses to unite them at the end the groundwork may begin to be laid down here.

Perhaps the most important dramatic point comes close to the end of the play with Isabella's public plea for Angelo to be spared. At this time Isabella still thinks that Claudio is dead. She has come before the Duke and a sizeable proportion of Viennese 38 society, calling for justice, and for Angelo to be punished. This man has hurt her in ways that three days ago she could not have imagined having to face. The moment when Isabella kneels down in front of everyone and says "Let him not die" (V.1.446) can become on stage a distillation of everything the play is about, and so careful attention to how the moment is handled is crucial to an understanding of a production. The final telling point will be how she responds to the Duke's two proposals of marriage. This is the last thing that happens in the play, and there are, of course, no convenient contemporary notes on blocking and gesture to suggest how it was originally intended that the play should end. All we have are the Duke's lines, Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good; Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, What's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. (V.1.531-534) How she reacts will therefore help shape not only the audience's final impression of Isabella's character, but also of the play itself.

Interspersed amongst the scenes playing out the main story are a number of scenes that depict the seamier side of Vienna, with pimps, prostitutes and their clients. These usually sustained heavy cutting in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, for the sake of propriety. Once sexual politics began to be regarded as an important theme, however, these scenes were given more prominence. In Michael Friedman's article on the topic, he divides the staging of the scenes involving prostitutes into the conventional (comic, happy, vulgar whores), the lascivious (presenting women's bodies in a way that will be titillating for the audience) and the adverse (highlighting the exploitative nature of prostitution by making the scenes unattractive). 22 These scenes provide the context within which the audience sees Isabella, and so will influence the presentation of her character. For example, in Michael Bogdanov's 1985 production at Stratford, Ontario, the whole theatre was turned into a kind of brothel-nightclub. An extended, suggestive and quite unwarranted prologue, involving a frenzied sexual dance, culminated in a circle closing in on the club's number one patron- Duke Vincentio

22 Friedman, p.14. 39

himself ... who gradually subsided to the floor amidst a rhythmically attentive knot of whores and transvestites. 23 In this scenario Isabella may appear wise to be trying to escape Vienna for the convent, but she may also be reduced, like these extras, to the position of fetishized object for the audience, who now know that this performance is to give them a display of bodies. Marriage to the Duke would also be a dubious venture in this version.

This kind of decision about the role of the Duke will have a marked effect on the status and function of all the characters in this play. Is he Christ-like allegorical figure, storybook hero, or something more ambivalent? The way the Duke is presented has changed over the years in ways that parallel changes in critical theory, and necessarily influence the presentation oflsabella. Peter Brook's interpretation, for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, rested heavily on finding the dark side of Vienna, based on his belief that the play "demands an absolutely convincing roughness and dirt".24 Critics have noted, however, that he did remove darkness from the character of the Duke wherever possible, by cutting any lines that made his motives ambiguous or morally suspect.25 When John Blatchley directed the first RSC production in 1962, with Judi Dench as Isabella, he too was happy to imbue the Duke with absolute power and unambiguous right. Their Dukes stayed in Vienna to restore order and make everyone happy.

It was a challenge to this traditional reading of the character when, in 1970, John Barton directed Sebastian Shaw as an aged and doddering Duke, who never seemed quite in control of what was going on. Four years later, Keith Hack gave a more political turn to this (still recent) idea of an anti-heroic Duke. His Duke manipulated the other characters quite confidently, but his actions were not presented to the audience as anything but manipulation. This vision of the Duke as motivated by political power was not fully expressed in critical writing until T.F. Wharton in 1989 wrote, "If his motives were truly spiritual, then his manoeuvres over the last three acts would seem sordid. If his motives are for power, we expect such things, and of course get them."26 Barton and Hack both

23 Anthony B. Dawson, quoted in Friedman, p.15. 24 Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: Granada, 1968), p.88. 25 Herbert Weil, "The Options of the Audience: Theory and Practice in Peter Brook's Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 27-35. 26 T.F. Wharton, The Critics Debate: Measure for Measure (London: Macmillan, 1989), p.71. 40 preferred to show the problems of a political structure where too much power is granted to a fallible individual. Their Dukes stayed in Vienna to show everyone how powerful they could be, and met with differing degrees of success. After Barton, before Hack, and on the other side of the world, John Bell's 1972 production for Nimrod found similar ground for the Duke, who was "a pedant, a moral fusspot, as vain as he is censorious".27

In the '80s and '90s, decades supposedly privileging self-centredness, Noble, Hytner, Nunn and Pimlott showed, in the Duke, men who were on their own journey of self discovery, with fewer concerns about the state of the State. They stayed in Vienna to learn more about themselves from the people. For the RSC's most recent production in 1998, Boyd was trying very hard to find an unexplored perspective on this character, and set it up by showing a Duke on the edge of a nervous breakdown running away from his office, leaving a recorded message giving Angelo power. In this scenario it is not clear at all why the Duke would have stayed in Vienna, when his only motivation appeared to be a desire to escape.

Isabella is not seen until well into the first act, but her reputation precedes her. Shakespeare sets up certain expectations about her through the words of her brother, Claudio, who describes her as being possessed of "a prone and speechless dialect / Such as move men", as well as "prosperous art/ When she will play with reason and discourse" (I.2.173-175). The first time Isabella appears, in the fourth scene, a nun is showing her around her new home at the convent and explaining the rules, and it is the first opportunity for a production to establish aspects of her personality that may later become important. It should be noted that Isabella specifically states that she is joining the order of St Clare, which was known for its strictness, poverty and austerity. This scene opens with an odd exchange: Isabella asks "And have you nuns no further privileges?" To which the nun replies, "Are these not large enough?" and Isabella quickly protests that she was hoping for even greater restraint (I.4.1-5). It seems a strange way of phrasing her initial enquiry, if that really was her point, and sarcasm seems an unlikely trait in someone who is notable throughout the play for her sincerity, and her inability to perceive a double entendre. She could, of course, be simply reassuring herself that there will not be any luxuries appearing

27 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 1972, quoted in Adrian Kiemander, "John Bell and a Post-colonial Australian Shakespeare", in O Brave New World: Two Centuries ofShakespeare on the Australian Stage, ed. John Golder and Richard Madelaine (Sydney: Currency Press, 2001), 236-255, p.242. 41 later, to spoil the rigour of the life she seeks. A more likely explanation might be that she is over-compensating, because she doesn't want the nun to think that she is not up to the commitment she is making. Juliet Stevenson, who played Isabella in Adrian Noble's 1983 production, noticed what this scene reveals about Isabella's sense of self-image: "She makes a point of saying, by the way she says something, 'this is who I am'. She shows a horror of being misunderstood."28

Her quickness to prevent Lucio from over-praising her has a similar feel. It might be reasonably assumed that she is still in the presence of the nun (who would certainly not leave a novice alone with a strange man, even though her presence cannot be flagged by speech, as she is subject to the constraints she has just described to Isabella, that do not permit her to speak with a man except in the presence of the Prioress), and may well be concerned about the impression it will make for a man to be first calling into question her virginity ("Hail virgin, if you be"), then describing her as a saint ("I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted"). As she chastises him with "Sir, make me not your story" and "You do blaspheme the good in mocking me" (1.4.16-38), she is still saying to the nun, "Don't think that this is the sort of banter I usually indulge in". Several productions, including Brook's, Hytner's, Pimlott's and Boyd's, have, in fact, had the nun exit and leave Isabella alone with Lucio.29 This will obviously affect the tone of their exchange. It curtails the scene's comic potential, which juxtaposes a nun and the character described in the dramatis personae as "a fantastic", and traps Isabella between the two, with the nun very likely expressing on her face a response to Lucio that she is not permitted to express in words. It may affect the first impression oflsabella's personality: if her reproving of Lucio is motivated by a concern for the reaction of the nun, it suggests that she is worried about the opinions of others; if they are alone on stage it might suggest an inherent seriousness, or a tendency to assume others are laughing at her.

Besides setting up this aspect of Isabella's character, this scene can also dispense with charges of prudishness made against her by examining her response to Lucia's news in this scene. In the very line when she asks if Juliet is pregnant to her brother, she refers to her as her "cousin", and goes on to explain that they were close friends at school:

28 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.43. 29 Exit noted in the respective promptbooks: Brook production, 1950; Hytner production, 1987; Pimlott production, 1994; Boyd production 1998. All held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 42

ISABELLA: Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet? LUCIO: Is she your cousin?

ISABELLA: Adoptedly, as schoolmaids change their names By vain though apt affection. (1.4.45-48) If there is one thing a prudish woman would never do, it is publicly align herself with a fallen woman. In arguing that Isabella has an abhorrence of the sexual body, Janet Adelman fixes on the single word "vain" and deduces from it that "Isabella immediately attempts to disown the connection". 30 However, it is Isabella, not Lucio, who brings up the connection, of which the latter was clearly unaware; the affection is as "apt" as it is "vain"; and "adoptedly" is a qualified affirmative, not a denial. Isabella's instant response on confirmation of the fact is "Oh, let him marry her" (1.4.49). Her instinct is not to moralize, or seek a delicate way around discussing the subject, but to go straight to a practical solution.

When she then goes on to plead Claudio's case to Angelo, she begins with an awkward preamble that effectively says to Angelo, "Don't think that I'm the sort of person who approves of this kind of thing". She initiates her position with: There is a vice that most I do abhor, And most desire should meet the blow of justice; For which I would not plead, but that I must; For which I must not plead, but that I am At war 'twixt will and will not. (11.2.29-33) Not the sort of thing that would make Claudio feel encouraged, could he hear his advocate, but her motives may simply be to impress on Angelo that her request should not be dismissed as coming from someone who regards such matters lightly. This is a woman who appears to be desperate for people not to get the wrong impression of her.

The coolness of her initial overtures has not gone unnoticed by critics, who have censured her for not showing greater enthusiasm for the task of saving her brother. 31 The reality of her position in this scene allows for other reasons beside callousness for her hesitancy. She has not met Angelo before, but knows that he is, at present, the highest authority in Vienna,

30 Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, p.89. 31 For example, Stephen Marx, Shakespeare and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000), p.84. 43 and may also be aware of his reputation as "a man of stricture and firm abstinence" (l.3.12). As a novice without public status, her position as a supplicant in the Viennese court could not help but be intimidating. Isabella's willingness to accept Angelo's judgement on her brother at first can be understood if she is someone who values appearance. As far as she knows, authority is wise and just, and Angelo is the very personification of authority. Here is a man who is clearly virtuous, noble and authoritative; how could he be wrong?

A number of critics believe there is a change between the Isabella of the first half of the play and the second. It is usually seen as primarily a change from coldness to warmth or harshness to charity, and its origin attributed to the wise and guiding hand of the Duke. 32 This is a reflection of the critical preoccupation with what is proper, or attractive, behaviour for a woman, and the denial of a personal journey for Isabella that is unrelated to male guidance. A change can be read in her character that originates much more in her exchange with Angelo, and is primarily about a concern with seeming, shifting to a concern with being. The turnaround happens, very precisely, on her line "Seeming, seeming!" (11.4.149), when she finally accepts that Angelo is serious about his proposition, and it is suddenly made obvious to her that appearance is meaningless. The man who appeared virtuous, just and righteous is none of these things, so she can no longer rely on appearance as a guide to truth. She initially fails to understand Angelo's insinuations, because that would involve seeing beyond the surface meaning of his statements, something she has not yet learned that there is any need to do. The unadorned, repeated word "seeming" demonstrates the shock of someone who is discovering "seeming" for the first time. The pivot oflsabella's character is this line. This change from faith in the appearance of right to faith only in the reality of right is much less appealing to most critics, as it comes spontaneously from Isabella herself, and cannot be cast as something she is deliberately led to by a man who knows what is best for her.

The Duke and Isabella have parallel but inverted journeys: she from a reliance on appearance as a guide to virtue to a realisation that it is what you know to be true that

32 These include the majority of the "problem play" critics mentioned in the Introduction, but also those as recent as Mark Taylor, "Farther Privileges: Conflict and Change in Measure for Measure", Philological Quarterly, 73 (1994), 169-193; Peter Lake, "Ministers, Magistrates and the Production of 'Order' in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 54 (2001), 165-181; and Marx. 44 matters, not what people think; he from a belief that what matters is doing the right thing to a realisation that to be a good ruler you have to show that the right thing is being done. In a reading that prioritizes the issue of seeming versus being, the Duke, by contrast with Isabella, begins by thinking that appearance is unimportant, and has shaped his rule accordingly. When he hears from Lucio that his quiet acts of charity can be made to seem surreptitious and guilty - "The Duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered" (111.2.170) - he is forced into the acceptance that to be a good ruler you have an obligation to appearance. This could be the motivation for the long and complicated denouement, when the Duke fully accepts his responsibilities for the first time. In the final scene, as Isabella demonstrates that she no longer sets store by what people think of her, the Duke demonstrates that he is now prepared to make an effort to shape what people think of him. Perhaps this puts them on a too uncomfortably even footing for the patriarchal order to accept as, in most criticism, the justice versus mercy issues seem to have completely subsumed the seeming versus being theme in the play. A.P. Rossiter is exceptional in discussing the latter aspect explicitly ("All the problem plays are profoundly concerned with seeming and being"), but immediately goes on to incorporate this idea into a broader one about "maskedness" without examining the point further. 33 J.W. Lever's influential introduction to the Arden edition breaks down his section on "themes" into "Justice and Mercy", "Grace and Nature" and "Creation and Death", making no mention of seeming and being. 34

The idea of seeming versus being is one that recurs many times in Shakespeare, but perhaps Hamlet comes closest to rivalling Measure for Measure in the prominence of this theme. The word "seem" and its variations occur even more often in Measure than in Hamlet, a much longer play. 35 Measure is unique in describing a class of people by their ability to seem, when the Duke says of his leaving Angelo with the power of the State in his hands, "Hence shall we see/ If power change purpose, what our seemers be" (1.4.53- 54). All the major characters "seem" in some way at some key point. The Duke seems to be a friar. Angelo seems honourable. Claudio seems to be dead. Isabella seems to give in to Angelo, and Mariana seems to be Isabella. Isabella, Angelo and the Duke all reflect at

33 A.P. Rossiter, Angel With Horns and Other Shakespeare Lectures, ed. Graham Storey (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961), p.127. 34 Lever, Introduction to Measure for Measure, pp.lxiii-xci. 35 22 instances in Measure, 20 in Hamlet. Oxford Concordances (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973 ). 45 key points on seeming and its conflict with truth. Isabella in her "Seeming, seeming!", but also in the final scene: "but let your reason serve/ To make the truth appear where it seems hid, / And hide the false seems true" (V .1.68-70). The Duke also muses, "That we were all, as some would seem to be,/ From our faults, as faults from seeming, free!" (III.2.37- 38). Rex Cramphorn made use of this theme, and its tension with the matters of justice and mercy in his four Australian productions, but particularly in his Adelaide production of 1985, which was deliberately performed in repertory with Hamlet, with strategically planned doublings. 36 In both these plays people struggle with trying to live up to what they seem, and uncover the seeming of others. Claudius and Angelo both find their prayers become empty words, unheard by God, because they only seem devout. For Angelo, "Heaven hath my empty words, I Whilst my invention, hearing not my tongue, I Anchors on Isabel" (II.4.2-4), while for Claudius, "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:/ Words without thoughts never to heaven go" (Hamlet, III.3.97-98).

Noble, two years earlier, had also touched on this area when he "directed the play as an indictment of mankind's self-deception".37 The production opened with the Duke standing in front of a full-length mirror, watching himself as servants dressed him in his robes of office. As the play progressed, however, the Duke began to adopt the position of comic hero, and this thematic concern seemed to evaporate from the production.

The lines that indicate Isabella's initial concern with how people see her set up a dramatic contrast with the Isabella of the final scene, who deliberately leads the whole of Vienna to believe the wrong thing about her, when she falsely confesses to fornication with Angelo. She does seem to have changed a great deal, in becoming someone who knows that it is the truth of who you really are that matters, not the appearance after all. This can also adequately explain why she is able to subscribe to the bed trick. Right will be done, even though it appears that wrong is being done. Submitting to the Duke's suggestion in this way is therefore different from submitting to Angelo and Claudio's requests, which would actually be doing wrong, not just appearing to do wrong.

36 Mark Minchinton, "Experiments in Shakespeare: Rex Cramphom and Measure for Measure, 1973 - 88", in O Brave New World, 200-208, pp.205-206. 37 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.42. 46

It is significant that in Isabella's soliloquy that concludes this scene, the famous line "More than our brother is our chastity" (II.4.184) is a change by Shakespeare from Cinthio and Whetstone's word "honour".38 Cinthio's heroine, Epitia, is primarily concerned with the way the world will see her. It should be noted that honour is a "seeming" word, a public word: it is possible to be corrupt and evil and still be honoured. Chastity is a word of actuality: if you are not chaste, you are not chaste, whether or not the world knows about it. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning of chastity as "purity from unlawful sexual intercourse; continence", with examples quoted from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth, and no mention of reputation in any of the definitions; and of honour (among others, which take up two full pages) as "(of a woman) chastity, purity, as a virtue of the highest consideration; reputation for this virtue, good name", with quotations from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. 39 So it is possible to have honour by reputation for chastity, but the chastity itself only by fact.

This line oflsabella's soliloquy has received completely disproportionate critical attention, to the neglect of the rest of the passage. Rossiter, for example, spends two pages weighing up the "difficulties" of this line, without seeking the answer in its context.40 McLuskie, too, criticizes the speech as "a pale affair", because it "deals only in the abstract opposition of chastity against her brother's life".41 And yet, when Juliet Stevenson closely examined the passage, in order to determine how to perform it, she found that 'More than our brother is our chastity' is neither the premise of the speech, nor its conclusion. The soliloquy starts somewhere else and finishes somewhere else. And what happens first in the speech teaches you how to speak the difficult line. And it also, I think, tells you that the speech is not about chastity, it's about anarchy.42 It is true that the speech does not begin with the matter of chastity at all: To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Who would believe me? 0 perilous mouths, That bear in them one and the self-same tongue

38 Cinthio and Whetstone's versions are detailed in the Appendices of the Arden edition. 39 Oxford English Dictionary, 1972 edition (Oxford: Oxford UP). 40 Rossiter, pp.159-160. 41 McLuskie, p.97. 42 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.51. 47

Either of condemnation or approof, Bidding the law make curtsey to their will, Hooking both right and wrong to th'appetite, To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother. (II.4.170-176) The first seven lines are about the horror of a situation where the person with the power to judge a case is corrupt. They are about the helplessness of the private individual in the face of governmental hypocrisy. Isabella is so far from being preoccupied with the matter of chastity that, in a seventeen-line soliloquy, only four lines are actually about the assault on her virtue.

The beauty of Isabella's arguments to Angelo has been observed by many, but it is interesting to look at the thoughts of those who saw less straightforward things. Bernice Kliman believes that Isabella is actually an inept debater, and that this is what gets her into trouble whenever she opens her mouth to try to fix something: "Isabella's main flaw as a debater is that she never decides just what she is arguing for - leniency, pardon, or time to prepare Claudio' s soul. "43 Peter Lake suggests that both Isabella and Angelo continually get tangled up in the differences between heavenly and secular law, particularly when arguing with each other: "Both are congenitally incapable of distinguishing consistently between the realms ofhuman and divine law,justice and mercy, between, if you like, religion and politics, the realm of the divine and that of the judge and the ruler."44 Vivian Thomas argues persuasively that Isabella's rationale for refusing Angelo is based not in the divine, but in secular codes that required a brother to defend his sister's honour. When she says "I would rather my brother die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born" (Ill.1.188-190), "the objection is not theological but social". 45 Her concern about chastity is expressed to Claudio in terms of being an assault on his honour as a man- a decidedly secular matter.

Of course, her concerns do not have to be exclusively temporal or spiritual, and the two can be reconciled. Her arguments to Angelo about why he should spare Claudio are along the lines of: God will judge us, and we have faith that he will be merciful. Therefore let us emulate not his justice, which we cannot hope to perfect, but his mercy, by finding the most

43 Bernice W. Kliman, "Isabella in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Studies, 15 ( 1982), 13 7-148, p.142. 44 Lake, p.176. 45 Vivian Thomas, The Moral Universe ofShakespeare's Problem Plays (London: Croom Helm, 1987), p.186. 48 generous application of the law. The points of intersection and tension between religious and secular moral values would have had day-to-day significance for a woman in a society like this one, that made virtues that were useful for social control, into virtues of the soul: Better it were a brother died at once, Than a sister, by redeeming him, Should die for ever. (11.4.106-108) If the immortal soul is a reality for Isabella, it is every bit as real as her brother's temporal death, and it is so because everything in her world has told her so. It was convenient for the patriarchy that women should believe that obedience, modesty and chastity could be the things that decided their fate in the afterlife. To criticize her for not reversing that belief, because an occasion arises when it would be convenient for men that she do so, is blatant hypocrisy.

Isabella's motivation for refusing Angelo's demand has been argued at length. Most bluntly, Anne Barton wrote in a programme note for John Barton's 1970 production, that "Isabella's purity conceals an hysterical fear of sex".46 Barton was writing, however, in relation to a specific production, and her assessment oflsabella's motives is rendered problematic by the features of this production. Ralph Berry quotes Anne Barton's note, calling it the "vital perspective" on Isabella, immediately following with, "and the conclusion leaves Isabella alone on stage, unresponsive to the Duke's overtures".47 John Barton's production concluded with the Duke and his entourage exiting, leaving Isabella behind to contemplate the marriage proposal he had just made, but such a scenario does not occur in isolation. Isabella was played by Estelle Kohler: young, pretty, with flowing blonde hair. Sebastian Shaw's Duke was old, bespectacled and bordering on incompetent. Berry's implication that this Isabella would need an hysterical fear of sex to be hesitant about marrying this Duke is only a more extreme version of Barton's belief that this is the only possible reason she would have to reject Angelo. Both make an assumption that a sexual rebuttal from a woman should be interpreted as a character flaw in her.

Sexual repression as the explanation for Isabella's decision is echoed by both conservative and feminist critics, including G. Wilson Knight ("Her sex inhibitions have been horribly

46 Anne Barton, Programme notes for John Barton's production (RSC, 1970). 47 Ralph Berry, Changing Styles in Shakespeare {London: Allen, 1981 ), p.41. 49

shown her as they are, naked" 48), Anne Barton ("afflicted with an irrational terror of sex',49), Edward Bond ("a vicious sex hysteric"50), David McCandless ("Isabella's beating fantasy enacts an atonement for Oedipal guilt, for incestuous desire of the forbidden father figure, Angelo"51 ) and Janet Adelman ("Isabella is forced to confront her sexual origins ... The panic engendered by this incipient recognition is voiced in the hysteria with which she responds to Angelo and later to Claudio"52). Underlying this perspective is an assumption that principle is an inadequate reason for Isabella to preserve her chastity; that there must be some other, concealed motive. Also that a person would need to be sexually inhibited to react negatively to the idea of being sexually abused. Vivian Thomas's discussion of the same issue is especially disturbing. He writes: "Of course, this seeming callousness in large part reflects Isabella's fear of sexual violation. Her repressed sexuality is suggested in her interview with Angelo ... "53 It is the immediate juxtaposition of these two sentences that is alarming. If Isabella is afraid of sexual violation, it is not an irrational fear, but because Angelo has told her that he plans to sexually violate her. Linking "fear of sexual violation" with "repressed sexuality'' implies either that Angelo forcing sex on Isabella would not be a violation, or that sexual violation is not something that it is reasonable to fear. The speech that Thomas quotes as demonstrating Isabella's repressed sexuality goes as follows: As much for my poor brother as myself; That is, were I under the terms of death, Th'impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies, And strip myself to death as to a bed That longing have been sick for, ere I'd yield My body up to shame. (11.4.99-104) These lines certainly seem infused with sexuality, but it is hardly repressed. It seems instead to be very consciously expressed. Given Angelo's inability to express his sexuality at all at this point in the play (as he drops hints, but tries to avoid stating what he wants from her), Isabella's use of such sensual language could be read as a challenge to his

48 G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel ofFire (London: Methuen, 1930), p.92. 49 Anne Barton, Introduction to Measure for Measure, in The Riverside Shakespeare, Vol.1, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 545-549, p.546. 50 Edward Bond, Programme notes for Keith Rack's production (RSC, 1974). 51 McCandless, p.106. 52 Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, p.96. 53 Thomas, p.177. 50 repression, or a way of differentiating herself from it. Juliet Stevenson reflected on her interpretation of these lines: "Many critics believe this speech betrays Isabella's unexamined sensuality. It's so erotic, and they don't think she's aware of the implied sense of the language. (I think she is.)"54 It seems unlikely that someone who uses words as dextrously as Isabella does in her encounters with Angelo could be unaware of the resonances of her language in this speech. She repeatedly reflects Angelo's words back to him: "Your brother is a forfeit of the law" becomes "Why all the souls that were, were forfeit once" (II.2.71 & 73); "Maid, no remedy" becomes "found out the remedy" (II.2.48 & 75); "you are ignorant" becomes "let me be ignorant" (II.4.74 & 76); and so "lay down the treasures of your body" becomes "Th' impression of keen whips I'd wear as rubies" (II.4.96 & 101). The imagery can be firmly located in the extensive tradition ofvirgin martyr literature, where martyrdom was the ultimate passionate act, putting love of God before love of the world.

There is evidence, then, that Isabella finds the idea of martyrdom appealing, but the martyrs avoided sexual violation, whereas many critics seem to conflate the desire for martyrdom with the repression of a desire for sexual violation. Ruth Nevo comes perilously close to subscribing to the idea that there are women who want to be raped, when she interprets the second half of the play as Mariana carrying out Isabella's wish fulfilment fantasy: The role to be played by Mariana could be doubly, triply satisfying to Isabella's exacerbated imagination: she is the permitted, semi-legitimized marriage partner in a fantasy replica of Juliet's (unconsciously envied) misdemeanour with her brother; she is sexual victim of the man who has tried to seduce her, and might well have triggered the underlying masochism already observed, the more especially since in a culture of shame such as Isabella's, disguise, a kind of absence, is a potent enabling factor for sexual fantasizing. And finally, the man who has tried to seduce her is, at the censored level of intellectual and conscious values, her avowed ideal, a spiritual double. 55

54 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.49. 55 Ruth Nevo, "Measure for Measure: Mirror for Mirror", Shakespeare Survey, 40 (1987), 107-122, p.119. 51

If Isabella were harbouring such potent subliminal desires to be Angelo's sexual victim, she would be most likely to simply acquiesce in his demands, in the manner ofEpitia and Cassandra.

Lisa Jardine also refers to Isabella's "obsessive fear of her own sexuality", and identifies the intersection of this with virgin-martyr literature, seeing her as having failed the test that such a literature implies: "The expectations concerning saintly virgins whose virtue is assaulted are used to undermine Isabella's position during the crucial scenes in which she allows her brother to go to his death rather than submit to Angelo."56 Jardine's logic, however, is confused. She claims that "Claudio is right: the deed 'becomes a virtue' in the tradition of The Golden Legend'',57 but her depiction of Isabella's relationship to that tale is that: Were Isabella a female saint of The Golden Legend (or one of the many romance female heroes who escape dishonour at the hands of a lord, like Greene's Cratyna), she would flee in disguise and do interminable servile penance for the lust she has aroused. Or she would stand firm and submit to torture, ending only with her death and martyrdom ... Shakespeare's Isabella is belittled by the stereotypes to whom she so flagrantly refuses to match up. Her stature is diminished, her virtue is placed in question. 58 It is clear from this description that none of these virtuous females actually did submit to their tormentor, as she implies Isabella should have. They all "escape" dishonour, even if only through martyrdom, and Isabella has quite firmly declared her willingness to take that course, were it permitted to her. Contrary to Jardine's deduction about Shakespeare's treatment of his character, Isabella is presented as very much the heir to such women, but one who is willing to take her independence and strength of character even further than they, by refusing to play the role of guilty party to someone else's behaviour, and in being vindicated in her decision by the play's conclusion. Jardine exemplifies the paradox that has dogged Isabella's choice: most critics concede that she could not possibly say yes to Angelo, but they nevertheless cannot forgive her for saying no. Some of this censure

56 Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age ofShakespeare (Brighton: Harvester, 1983), pp.190-191. 57 Ibid. Claudio's full line is "What sin you do to save a brother's life,/ Nature dispenses with the deed so far / That it becomes a virtue" (III.1.131-133). 58 Ibid. 52 undoubtedly comes from discomfort with the manner in which she responds to the situation. Those who feel she is not upset enough at the prospect of her brother's death are not as far removed as one might think from those who call her hysterical. The problem is that she does not react in a "womanly" way, with weeping, grieving and piteousness, but instead usurps a male privilege - anger.

A combination of modem secular sympathy and the principles of new historicism has produced a series ofreadings that have in various ways diminished the value oflsabella's vocation and principles. J.W. Lever quotes the sixteenth-century writer William Tyndale on "Lucrece as a martyr to pagan chastity: 'She sought her owne glory in her chastite and not gods ... ' A real-life Isabella, despising Claudio for his unwillingness to sacrifice himself for his sister's 'glory', would surely have received scant sympathy from Shakespeare's contemporaries".59 "Glory" is Tyndale's term; Isabella uses no such self aggrandising words. Having brought into the argument the prospect of a "real-life Isabella", it would be only fair for Lever to pursue this idea to its conclusion. The world of Measure for Measure is full of reminders of the real-life consequences of sex. Jokes about syphilis abound, and both Juliet and Kate Keepdown have suffered because of illegitimate pregnancy, the former imprisoned, the latter forced into prostitution.60 Isabella shows herself aware of these consequences when she says, "I had rather my brother die by the law, than my son should be unlawfully born" (111.1.188-190). Lever's real-life Isabella can fully expect the result of her sacrifice for her brother to be public shame, condemnation, ostracism and possible destitution.

Along the same lines of thought, but more extensively, Darryl Gless' s book Measure for Measure, the Law and the Convent reads the entire play as an anti-monastic satire. 61 He believes that Isabella's behaviour is being satirized as papist and in conflict with Protestant Christian doctrine, and that the position she takes is meant to be ridiculed as presumptuous

59 Lever, pp.lxxx-lxxxi. 60 Kate Keepdown's predicament is not explained in detail, but Lucio admits to the Duke that he is the father of her child. Had she already been a prostitute when Lucio had sex with her, there would be no way for him to know this for sure. It is most likely that she has had to resort to prostitution to support herself and the child after Lucio's refusal to do so. If this is extrapolating too far, it certainly happened all the time in Lever's "real life". 61 Darryl J. Gless, Measure for Measure, the Law and the Convent (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979). 53 and anti-Christian. A by-product of this reading, of course, is that Isabella's power as a disruptive force is diminished and trivialized.

A different tactic to similar ends is the emphasis on Isabella's "fear"; not only Barton's "hysterical fear of sex", Jardine's "obsessive fear of her own sexuality", and Thomas's "fear of sexual violation", but also Rossiter's "scared souls are small souls; and as she leaves Angelo, Isabella's soul is scared".62 Isabella has just confronted and defied the most powerful man in Vienna. In any other context this would be seen as an action requiring tremendous personal grit and courage. To suggest that this was an act that demonstrates fear rather than courage is again to diminish the character without justification. Isabella as fearful rather than courageous was the impression given to several reviewers by Nunn's version: "Isabella may have gone into a nunnery because she fears the obscure perils of sensuality"63 and "the chaste Isabella, who regards sex with loathing and fear". 64 Jeremy Kingston also speaks of her "abhorrence of sex, with or without a wedding beforehand". 65 These impressions are of a specific performance, and in that performance, "David Haig's Angelo hurls the unfortunate novice on to a chaise-longue with a view to rape".66 That these men could watch the kind of scene that Billington describes here, and infer from it that Isabella has a fear of all sexual contact, suggests that the aberrant sexuality might reside more in the reviewer than the character. It might be expected that newspapers in the 1990s would reflect a more informed understanding of sexual relations.

Mark Taylor takes a slightly different, more psychological approach, and attributes Isabella's decision on Angelo to be an aspect of her sense of vocation, which he reads as a search for a father figure: The young girl Isabella lost a father and some time thereafter made plans to join the sisters of St Clare ... Her desire for greater discipline in this life of withdrawal invites the hypothesis that she understands the sisterhood as filling the role of her lost father ... The world can scarcely be more threatening than

62 Rossiter, p.160. 63 John Peter, Sunday Times, 22 September 1991. 64 Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 20 September 1991. Spencer's is probably the most extraordinary of these reviews, as he thought Skinner "heartrendingly suggests some buried trauma" that results in her "ugly, fist-flying tantrum" with Claudio. Attributing Isabella's distress to a mysterious "buried trauma" raises the question of where Spencer had been during Act II. 65 Jeremy Kingston, Times, 20 September 1991. 66 Michael Billington, Guardian, 20 September 1991. 54

to a young girl who has lost her parents, and removal from the world's power can scarcely be more absolute (short of suicide) than in the form ofretreat into a convent. 67 Taylor thinks he is putting himself in Isabella's place, and imagines that the world is something from which she would want to be rescued, and that the Duke would appear to her as a knight in shining armour. In reality, he is speaking much more from the point of view of the Duke, imagining how he would like Isabella to feel. His sense of her situation both over-reads the material in the text, and inadequately historicizes the social context in operation for any girl of this period. A European girl in the seventeenth century was legally always under the control of a man: her father, then her husband, or in their absence her brother or son. The only place in the world she could go to avoid being under the direct control of a man was a convent, and yet Taylor finds a way to see her decision to enter one as an expression of her desire to be under the control of a man. He diminishes her choice, and by doing so neutralizes the threat she poses if she is genuinely not interested in men.

To counterbalance these examples, some feminist critics have examined the historical circumstances surrounding Isabella's decisions, first to enter a convent and second to refuse Angelo, and drawn very different conclusions. In direct opposition to Lever, Alison Findlay has theorized that, when the play was first performed, "since many women had direct experience of persecution in more or less extreme forms, in their families, Isabella's image of martyrdom could have been a collective experience, shared by female spectators".68 Discerning the way in which "in Vienna, mercantile sexuality and holy chastity exist in each other's sinews",69 Findlay can see many legitimate reasons why a woman like Isabella might want to enter a convent, and draws detailed parallels with contemporary figures such as Mary Ward, who began in Isabella's order, the poor Clares, but went on to set up her own order that promoted venturing into the community to preach and do good works, challenging the idea of entering a convent as an act of retreat. Alice Amott Oppen details the legal power of men over women in Shakespeare's period, and looks at some medieval nuns such as Hrotsvit, Hildegarde and Heloise, who used the

67 Taylor, p.181. It would be interesting to hear what a nun's response would be to the implication that following her spiritual calling is an action little short of suicide. 68 Alison Findlay, A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (London: Blackwell, 1999), p.38. 69 Findlay, p.35. 55 convent as a base from which to pursue their writing on theology, philosophy, and their own emotions. 70 Poonam Trivedi also discusses Mary Ward, and the way the dissolution of the monasteries curtailed opportunities for girls who sought independence from the rule of men. Like Jardine, Trivedi has historicized Isabella's position within virgin-martyr mythology, but discerned in it support rather than criticism for Isabella's position. By examining the history of the cult of virginity in Renaissance Europe, she demonstrates what a vast body ofliterature sanctioned and approved of a woman's valuing of her virginity above all other considerations. She also points out the many ways that the story follows the traditional pattern of a virgin-martyr tale, including the elements of ritual public humiliation deemed necessary as a guard against pride. 71

Whichever argument is felt to be most convincing, the lesson they teach as a whole is that a woman's decision about what she does with her body is still regarded as something on which everyone is entitled to make a judgement.

It would be difficult to play out the scenes between Angelo and Isabella in a way that was not dramatically effective, and reviews of most productions comment on their power. Isabella's strength in this scene is inevitably apparent, but the source of that strength will vary from one production to another. By the time Juliet Stevenson played the role it was the 1980s, and '"feminist' had made its way into the vocabulary; chastity had been reclaimed as a sexual option; Isabella was ripe for recuperating".72 Stevenson is an actor unusually engaged with critical theory and, armed with a feminist sensibility and an active brain, she often produces interpretations of characters, thought to be already well understood, that are both rigorously anchored in the text, and in complete opposition to what has been assumed of them. Consequently, her Cressida was noted for her sincerity, her Rosalind for her seriousness and her Isabella for her warmth. She wore a black dress that provided a simple silhouette, but a rich texture, her hair out and curled, giving an overall impression of softness. Far from being repressed, this Isabella was "clued in to her

70 Alice Arnott Oppen, Shakespeare: Listening to the Women (Henley Beach: Seaview, 2000). 71 Poonam Trivedi, "Shakespeare's Problem Plays and Problem Women: Feminist Contexts" (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 1988). 72 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.40. 56 sexuality from the first". 73 There was a great deal of humour in Stevenson's performance, underlined by a fair amount of comic business with the Duke.

When Stevenson had her crucial confrontation with Angelo, it was with full acknowledgement of the erotic charge that can be read into the rhythms of their scenes together, which is full of shared lines and quick responses. "She and Angelo have been copulating across the verse ever since they first met"74 was Stevenson's assessment, which was obviously a provocative stance to take. One theorist who took offence at the idea is Sarah Werner, who wrote: To read Isabella's plea to Angelo as 'copulating across the verse' is to suggest that Angelo's advances to her in their next meeting are invited (and perhaps even welcomed) by Isabella; to read Isabella and Angelo as 'interdependent' suggests that they are equals, and that Angelo's request for sex is thus not sexual harassment but a reasonable proposition.75 The reasoning in this argument is, however, deeply flawed. The scene works so well when played in this way precisely because it is a sexy, brilliant intellectual battle between equals, until Angelo ruins it by changing the rules unfairly and exploiting the advantage of his position. If a woman enjoys arguing with a man, it does not mean she wants to, or will consent to, sleep with him. Werner also makes the common mistake of forgetting that Angelo is not asking Isabella for a date, he is asking her for a bribe; a fact of which Stevenson was profoundly aware: If condemnation and approof speak with the same tongue, if the same 'perilous mouth' that is condemning her brother for fornication is soliciting her, and if there is no appeal to justice because the judge himself is corrupt, that's chaos; by saying 'yes' to Angelo, Isabella would be committing herself to chaos. It's not her chastity that's at stake, it's order.76

These arguments highlight an ongoing difficulty in coming to grips with critical thought regarding Measure for Measure, that is, that Angelo's proposed bargain is hardly ever discussed in terms of being an act of corruption. The above assessment of Stevenson's

73 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.49. 74 Ibid. 75 Sarah Werner, "Performing Shakespeare: Voice Training and the Feminist Actor", New Theatre Quarterly, 12 (1996), 249-258, p.254. 57 appears to be the closest thing to a published tabling of the idea that even in a world where no value at all is placed on chastity or virginity, giving Angelo what he asks might still be wrong. Is it ever acceptable to bribe a judge? Seeking explanations for Isabella's choice in a character flaw linked to a pathological sexuality ignores the nature of Angelo's proposal as not being merely about sex, but about corruption, bribery and violence.

Werner does focus on the important question of the degree to which an actor needs to keep in mind that the character is not a real person, but a construct of the playwright. She makes, however, the unreasonable assumption that, if one approaches Shakespeare's text with that kind of critical application of thought, the conclusion will be that his characters are not convincing representations of women. If this were the case, it should have been impossible for intelligent actors like Stevenson, Lyons, Simon and Gonet to have used this material to produce the performances they did.

In Enright's production there was a similar sexual charge between Susan Lyons and Peter Cousins which, for Lyons, highlighted, rather than diminished, Isabella's ethical stance. Lyons feels that Isabella's strongest desire is always to live a life guided by principle, and a meaningful ethical code. For this reason, a sense of attraction to Angelo only makes her refusal of his advances more powerful.77

Josette Simon was a much tougher Isabella than Juliet Stevenson, but showed the audience the vast difference that lies between being tough and principled, and being uptight and neurotic, as some would have Isabella. Hytner's production gave the most physically shocking version of Isabella's encounter with Angelo. He pushed her down, first on his desk, then onto the floor, tore off her veil, and came very close to raping her on the spot.78 This is the most direct way in staging terms to make sure a modem audience cannot trivialize the threat involved. David McCandless engages with this issue in his discussion of his own production: "Isabella's choice of chastity over her brother's life becomes much more sympathetic when viewed as a defence against sexual violence."79 To this end, he made sure that Isabella was explicitly physically threatened by Angelo as a form of what

76 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.51. 77 In interview with the author, 25 November 2002. 78 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 79 McCandless, p.109. 58 he refers to as "feminist gestus". Charles Marowitz, in his 1970 adaptation of the play, could also be seen as doing this, but problematizes the issue by taking it to its extreme.so In his version, Isabella does submit to Angelo, Angelo really does have Claudio beheaded, and the Duke colludes with him. The piece ends with a nightmare sequence in which Isabella is trapped on all sides by the men. Although this reworking makes explicit the devastating nature of male power over women, it denies Isabella her definitive personal characteristic: her ability to stand up to men. There can be great power in the ability to refuse, and Shakespeare bestows this power on Isabella, while Marowitz removes it again.

In contrast to Hytner's version, the Angelo in Pimlott's production did not touch Stella Gonet at all. He fell to his knees centre stage on the line "Plainly conceive, I love you." (11.4.140) and spoke his lines as if genuinely begging for pity from her. That this weak man was going to use the power of the state to make himself artificially strong against her was clearly to Isabella a disgusting prospect. This version showed how much tension can be created with the power of the words, without creating a simplified position for the audience through violent action.

When Isabella goes to Claudio to "fit his mind to death for his soul's rest", he does not react with the "mind of honour" (11.4.178, 186) that she expected, but with a painfully visceral speech describing his fear of death. He begs her to save his life, and critics have had perhaps their most intractable difficulty with Isabella at this point, as she not only refuses, but berates Claudio harshly, concluding with the declaration that she will "pray a thousand prayers for thy death; / No word to save thee" (111.1.145-146). This scene has been presented by many as evidence oflsabella's lack of mercy, in order to support the reading that the Duke puts her through what he does for her own good, in order for her to learn charity.s1 In the previous scene, however, Isabella herself has made the distinction: lgnomy in ransom and free pardon Are of two houses: lawful mercy Is nothing kin to foul redemption. (11.4.111-113)

8°Charles Marowitz, The Marowitz Shakespeare (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1978). 81 See, for example, Robert Grams Hunter, Shakespeare and the Comedy ofForgiveness (New York: Columbia UP, 1965). 59

What she shows to Claudio is not an absence of mercy, but an instinctive knowledge of when mercy ceases to be the genuine article, and becomes "seeming": "Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd" (III.1.49).

Even those who believe she was right to refuse him usually balk at the severity if her attack, and suggest, with Charlotte Lennox, that from her character, her profession and degree ofrelation to the unhappy youth, one might have expected mild expostulations, wise reasonings and gentle rebukes; his desire of life, though purchased by methods he could not approve, was a natural frailty, which a sister might have pitied and excused, and have made use of her superior understanding to reason down his fears, recall noble ideas to his mind, teach him what was due to her honour and his own, and reconcile him to his approaching death, by arguments drawn from that religion and virtue of which she made so high an impression; but that torrent of abusive language, those coarse and unwomanly reflexions on the virtue of her mother, her exulting cruelty to the dying youth, are the manners of an affected prude, outrageous in her seeming virtue; not of a pious, innocent and tender maid. 82

It is more than two hundred years since Lennox wrote the above passage, but the sentiments have continued to be expressed by other critics in various guises, the more recent taking the form of interpreting Isabella's outburst as demonstrating either selfishness or repression. Precisely two hundred and thirty years after Lennox, Frye wrote that "a real saint, whatever her course of action, would have shown some sympathy with and compassion for Claudio's plight". 83 One alternative perspective on the priorities such critics demonstrate is put forward by Oppen: "We find that even in resisting rape and maintaining chastity, Isabella should have remained gentle and supportive of men, able to think of their needs first."84 This has also been the implied view ofreviewers of productions that showed a strong and single-minded Isabella, such as Margaret Johnston's in 1956: "Morality is not one of the most endearing qualities one looks for in a woman. One feels one would like her better with a little frailty, a little warmth of even 'irregular'

82 Charlotte Lennox, quoted in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660- 1900, ed. Ann Thompson & Sasha Roberts (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1997), p.18. 83 Northrop Frye, The Myth ofDeliverance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983 ), p.21. 84 Oppen, p.207. 60 emotion",85 and "Margaret Johnston's Isabella is from the beginning too much the shrewish, maiden-auntish defender of her chastity".86 One of the major Shakespearean critics writing at roughly the time of this production, J.M.W. Tillyard, may have distilled the real motivation behind such feelings, in speaking of "an unfortunate habit of treating Shakespeare's heroines as a repertory of ideal brides ... If you were a young man free to choose a bride, would it be Miranda or Beatrice? ... Now Isabella comes off very ill on such a criterion".87 Harriet Walter may have been even closer to the mark, when she said: "[Shakespeare's] men can be compromised or compromising. The women can be neither. The women have to be 'liked' ."88

Were Isabella able to explain kindly and rationally to Claudio why she was going to let him die, it would indeed be evidence that she did not really love him. Shakespeare shows here an instinctive understanding of psychology, if it is assumed that Isabella wants more than anything else to save Claudio. If she is asked to do something she wants to do, but which she knows she must not do, and asked by someone she loves, the only way to avoid being drawn into the vortex is to lash out against it with passion equal to Claudio's. In effect, she is making her anger even bigger than his fear, so that there is no chance of being tempted, cajoled or persuaded to give up the position that she knows is right for one she might prefer for selfish reasons. Melvin Seiden, in making his argument that Isabella does accept the Duke's proposal at the end, finds in this scene evidence of the consistent nature of her character, throughout. He makes two key points: that Isabella will always take the harder path over the easy option, and that what is for her the harder path may not be that which seems the harder to others: The hardness of her refusal is precisely not selfish and egotistical; it is as much a denial of the self as it is a denial of "charity'' ... What they [Isabella's detractors] fail to acknowledge is another kind ofrepression: the quelling of easy, instinctive choices; the subordination of personal desire to the stem commands of a moral imperative. 89

85 The Stage, 16 August 1956. 86 Daily Telegraph, 15 August 1956. 87 J.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1950), p.120. 88 Rutter, p.73. 89 Seiden, pp.163-164. 61

This very closely describes the interpretation performed by Lyons, who found this scene the hardest in the play. Her Isabella would have much preferred to sleep with Angelo and save Claudio, but knew that would mean throwing away the whole governing principle of her life. For Lyons, Claudio's plea was "the apple. The greatest temptation." 90

Onstage this is obviously a highly emotional scene, that is bound to provoke a similarly emotional response. It would be difficult to watch the desperate Claudio pleading for his life without feeling compassion for his position. Those reflecting on the scene, however, have at times allowed this to distort their perception of the action. Actor Tim Piggot-Smith wrote a foreword to the Everyman edition of the play, which begins: "In Act III Isabella asks her brother to sacrifice his life to save her virginity. " 91 He is echoed by Lever, who describes Isabella as "despising Claudio for his unwillingness to sacrifice himself for his sister's 'glory"'.92 Also by Macdonald, who speaks of"her bland assumption about Claudio's willingness to sacrifice his life for her virginity'', 93 and even by the caption on a photograph of Judi Dench and Ian Holm, in the Shakespeare Su111ey special edition on the problem plays, which reads "Isabella begs Claudio to save her chastity''.94 Had Angelo simply seen Isabella on the street and killed Claudio in a duel over possession of her it might be said that he sacrificed his life for her virginity; but in this play Claudio's life is already forfeit, and it is he who is doing the asking, and she who would be making the sacrifice. The two cannot be regarded as interchangeable. The slant these critics give to the scenario carries with it the implication that Isabella is asking something unreasonable of Claudio, and protects them from having to consider whether he is asking something unreasonable of her.

Kyle's production was seemingly slanted towards making the audience sympathetic to Claudio, and critical of Isabella, by casting a very young actor in the role and making sure that his imprisonment had affected his appearance. Dionisotti remembers:

90 In interview with the author, 25 November 2002. 91 Tim Piggot-Smith, Foreword to Measure for Measure (London: Everyman, 1994), p.xiii. 92 Lever, p. 1xxx1. . 93 Ronald R. Macdonald, "Measure for Measure: The Flesh Made Word", Studies in English Literature, 30 (1990), 265-282, p.278. 94 Kenneth Muir and Stanley Wells, Aspects ofShakespeare's Problem Plays (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982), p.76. 62

Barry Kyle had this idea that Claudio was a terribly young and innocent boy, just in case the audience would side with Isabella too much. He cast him very young and moon-faced. For Barry I was very much the older sister ... When I came into the prison, Claudio looked absolutely dreadful. 95 This scene prompted Dusinberre (one of the first critics to attempt a feminist critique of Shakespeare's women) to write "generosity, compassion, tolerance are not present in Isabella's rigorous chastity",96 forgetting the tolerance apparent in her instinctive reaction to her brother's relationship with Juliet - "Someone with child by him? My cousin Juliet? ... Oh, let him marry her!" (1.4.45-49)- the compassion in her response to Mariana's plight - "What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world!" (111.1.231- 232) - and the generosity involved in pleading for Angelo's life after he had so drastically wronged her.

McCandless, in his theory of feminist gestus, describes a blocking decision in his production that allowed the audience to see this scene, too, from Isabella's perspective. He had Claudio grab Isabella in panic, inadvertently using the same gesture that Angelo had used to attack her, making his appeal seem obviously like a second assault to the stricken Isabella: On his concluding line, "Sweet sister, let me live," he desperately, forcefully embraced her and, as she recoiled, ended up on top of her, in a position distressingly similar to the one Angelo had assumed in his attempted rape. Although Claudio's only intention was to plead for his life, the parallel to Angelo's assault impeached the integrity of his request to live97 Brook also appears to have set up this parallel, as the promptbook to his production notes a similar gesture of gripping Isabella's arms by both Angelo and Claudio.98 This was interpreted by Mary McNally, who wrote a thesis comparing reviewers' responses to productions of Measure for Measure with critical writing from the same time frame, as a deliberate device to strengthen sympathy for Barbara Jefford's Isabella.99

95 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, pp.32, 34. 96 Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (London: Macmillan, 1975). 97 Mccandless, p.109. 98 Promptbook, Brook production, 1950. Held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 99 Mary Patricia McNally, "A Vicious Sex Hysteric or a Thing Enskied and Sainted: A Survey of Twentieth Century Stage Representations and Criticism oflsabella in Measure for Measure" (unpublished Masters thesis, University of Birmingham, 1990), p.42. 63

Schanzer, who argues that the real problem plays are Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, suggests a parallel between Brutus and Isabella in that both make a difficult moral choice, his impression being that Shakespeare believed they made the wrong choice. 100 This is never properly substantiated, as there is evidence in both plays that the choice they made is to be admired. Even Mark Antony says of Brutus: This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar. He only, in general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. (Julius Caesar, V.5.68-72) In Isabella's case, the approval of her action comes from the concealed and watching Duke. He says to her, "The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good" (111.1.179), and even Claudio, once the Duke has calmed him down, thinks only to ask her pardon. George Geckle argues in some detail that the Duke here is confirming her "spiritual goodness" to the audience. 101

The Duke then puts forward his scheme for solving all the problems he has helped create. This presents one of the trickiest points in the play for those who would read for consistency. If the Duke already knew about Angelo's treatment of Mariana, why did he praise him to Escalus and leave him in charge in the first scene? If Isabella is so concerned about chastity, why is she willing to let Mariana do what she herself will not? If the Duke is really concerned for these people, why does he maintain his disguise, when revealing who he is would make the whole process simpler?

As to the first question, it has been asserted that the Duke's knowledge of Angelo's treatment of Mariana suggests that he knew or expected Angelo's failure as a ruler; but foreknowledge that Angelo would behave in a way that is uncharitable but not illegal is no warning that he will fall in the almost opposite way he does with Isabella. The Duke may know his deputy to be an unfeeling man from his treatment of his betrothed and still believe his sins come from an excessive strictness of character, and not from the levity typical of the rest of the public.

100 Ernest Schanzer, Problem Plays ofShakespeare (London: Routledge, 1963). 101 George L. Geckle, "Shakespeare's Isabella", Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 163-168, p.167. 64

The second question has caused many to balk (Arthur Quiller-Couch said, "She is all for saving her own soul, and she saves it, of a sudden, by turning into a bare procuress", 102 and even Jan Kott said that Isabella "saves her own soul ... but gives the other's body to

Angelo" and "agrees without hesitation to procure for Angelo"103), but can be at least partially answered by examining the historical context of marriage laws at the time of writing. Ernest Schanzer, in his discussion of the play, distinguished between the different types of marriage contract involved in the story to explain the seeming contradiction. 104 The legal issues surrounding marriage in Measure for Measure are confusing, but mainly because, in this period, the laws themselves were confused. Contracts were used to arrange marriages, but these were optional. An agreement by the parties involved was the only technical requirement. There were two kinds of marriage agreement operating in Shakespeare's England, the present (de praesenti) and the future (de futuro). A present contract was most like our current system, except that a public ceremony or written contract was not absolutely required. This is the position Claudio and Juliet are in, though their lack of a public declaration left them vulnerable to the accusation that they were not properly married. At the time of the writing of the play, the church and state were making an effort to regulate marriage and crack down on private and secret arrangements such as theirs. A future contract was similar to a betrothal, except that no additional ceremony was necessary for the betrothal to officially become a marriage. All that was required was for the couple to consummate the relationship. This is the category into which Angelo and Mariana's contract falls.

It is easy to see why Claudio's union with Juliet may appear to be the same thing as Angelo's with Mariana, but Shakespeare is at some pains to emphasize the difference between them through the words of the Duke, who upbraids Juliet with "Repent you, fair one, of the sin you carry?" and "your most offenceful act" (II.3.19,26), but speaks repeatedly to Mariana about her contractual union with Angelo: "He is your husband on a pre-contract: I To bring you thus together 'tis no sin" (IV.1.72-73). The thing preventing Claudio and

102 Arthur Quiller-Couch, Introduction to Measure for Measure (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1922), p.xxx. 103 Jan Kott, "Head for Maidenhead, Maidenhead for Head: the Structure of Exchange in Measure for Measure", Theatre Quarterly, 8.31 (1978), 18-24, p.21. 104 Schanzer, pp.109-111, and in his article "The Marriage Contracts in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 13 (1960), 84-86; also Lever, pp.liii-lv; and perhaps most thoroughly, Marcus, pp.171-175. 65

Juliet from being regarded as married was a public declaration before their consummation. The only thing stopping Angelo and Mariana from being regarded as married was that they had not slept together. This is why the thing that is a capital offence for Claudio can be encouraged by the Duke for Angelo, and why the Duke can censure Juliet for behaviour that seems to us identical to that which he actively suggests to Mariana. If, as Thomas argues, Isabella is concerned primarily with the secular legality of the situation, there is no reason for her not to accept the Duke's reassurances to Mariana. Curiously, many critics writing well after the publication of Schanzer's and others' treatments of the issue continue to speak of Mariana and Angelo as committing "exactly the same sin"105 as Claudio and Juliet, without discussing the specifics of contemporary laws, or the distinction made by the Duke.

The third question has been best addressed in criticism by Wharton and in performance by Hack and Boyd. Wharton makes the point that the Duke's actions in Act V make sense if we take it that his motivation is to appear publicly powerful. It might also be useful to observe that such a display of power makes best structural sense when taken in contrast to his rejection of it at the beginning of the play. His concluding actions show a significant change in the character from avoiding to accepting his responsibility to be a public leader. Hack showed a Duke who appeared to be manipulating everyone all along, in order to demonstrate his omnipotence and omnipresence. The play was a public relations exercise for a professional politician. Hack also satirized the obvious structure of the conclusion by having the Duke enter on a platform labelled "deus ex machina". This obvious artifice, seen as a flaw by many, is read by Jean-Pierre Maquerlot as a deliberate manifestation of the mannerist tradition: "All's Well and Measure for Measure go to unprecedented lengths in unveiling the artificiality of the dramatic machinery."106 In performance there are gains and losses in embracing this aspect of the text. It may enhance the play's cleverness, but reduce its humanity. It will tend to emphasize the Duke, and this may be at the expense of other characters, like Isabella. This emphasis, however, need not reach the point of dismissiveness of Ralph Berry, in his book of interviews with Shakespearean directors. Adrian Noble suggested that "Nowadays the leading character is either Isabella or the

105 Taylor, p.189 (1994). 106 Jean-Pierre Maquerlot, Shakespeare and the Mannerist Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), pp.147-148. 66

Duke, probably the Duke". To which Berry replied, "I would say the Duke always, these days_,,101

It has already been noted that Brook's 1950 production was cut in a way that removed the Duke's ambiguity. What has generally escaped comment is his similar "cleaning up" of Isabella. In the central "plot" scene, where the Duke suggests the bed trick to her, Brook pared down Barbara Jefford's lines to the bare bones of what was necessary for the scene to function. The most telling excised lines were: "I am now going to resolve him. I had rather my brother die by the law than my son should be unlawfully born." (111.1.194 ); "I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth ofmy spirit." (111.1.211); "What a merit were it in death to take this poor maid from the world! What corruption in this life that it will let this man live!" (l11.1.241-243). 108 In other words, anything that suggests Isabella's complex moral stance was cut, including any lines suggesting her tendency to be enamoured of death; but taken with it is any sense of her articulateness, her intellect and her individuality. She became a simple heroine in the guiding hands of the hero.

Barry Kyle set up a particularly large hurdle for his Isabella in this scene. In the text, 111.2 is a comic scene that follows Isabella's conversation with the Duke. Wanting the planning of the bed trick to conclude the first act, and create a sense of tension before the interval, Kyle transposed the comic passage to the middle of 111.1, between Isabella's conversation with Claudio, and the Duke's intervention. As Paola Dionisotti described it to Carol Rutter, this "made the scene unplayable". "For somebody with Isabella's moral standards to agree that some other woman she doesn't know should do that ... It's utterly improbable, and Shakespeare builds the scene around that improbability. It works if she is so devastated by what happened ... that she is like putty in the Duke's hands ... But if she's given any time to go off stage and collect herself or in any way recover, the scene is impossible."109 In a demonstration of the way the success or failure of a scene can depend on what is being looked for, Graham Nicholls saw this editing as working well: "This arrangement was theatrically effective in that the prose explanations did not lose impact by following the violent scene with Claudio. Isabella was not required to switch drastically

107 Ralph Berry, On Directing Shakespeare (London: Harmondsworth, 1989), p.168. 108 Promptbook: Brook production, 1950. 109 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.38. 67

from the impassioned berater of her brother to the Duke's impassive auditor."110 What is a crucial psychological progression for the actor playing the role can be seen as an implausible shift in mood by an observer, and vice versa.

When the Duke brings Isabella to meet Mariana, he does not tell the latter of the plan himself, but instructs Isabella to do so. This was the occasion for some comic business in the 1985 Noble version, as Juliet Stevenson mimed fury at Daniel Massey's palming the task off onto her without warning, and he ducked out of the way. By contrast, in Pimlott's 1994 version this was a scene of extreme seriousness, as Mariana seemed sickened and distressed by the proposition, despite her agreement. 111 A review of this production, incidentally, shows that a tendency to trivialize female experience is not confined to responses to Isabella. Tanya Moodie's Mariana was discovered working passionately, with both brushes and hands, on an enormous, vividly coloured abstract painting. Paul Taylor put it to readers of the Independent and the Guardian "that she has turned into a paintbrush-wielding Rolf Harris". 112 As Isabella is not given a scene with Juliet, despite the description of their closeness, her meeting with Mariana is the first establishment of a female relationship in this play, and it develops quickly into one of Shakespeare's many instances of female mutual supportiveness. Kathleen McLuskie theorized that Mariana could play a useful role in a radical feminist production, wherein "it might celebrate Isabella's chastity as a feminist resistance, making her plea for Angelo's life a gesture of solidarity to a heterosexual sister and a recognition of the difficulty of breaking the bonds of family relations and conventional sexual arrangements" .113 Much has been made of this relationship in performance, in recent years, as actresses find in it a strength to balance the manipulation of the male characters, and a warmth to balance preconceptions about Isabella's coldness.

This brings us to the question of the significance oflsabella's plea for Angelo, that is both a culmination and an interpretation of the relationship of all the major characters as constructed by the preceding action. Although both Isabella and Angelo recede from centre stage in the second half of the play, as the Duke begins controlling the action, they

110 Nicholls, pp.63-64. 111 Archival videos of Noble and Pimlott's productions held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 112 Paul Taylor, review run in both the Independent and the Guardian, 22 October 1994. 113 McLuskie, p.94. 68 still have one more crucial, albeit less intimate, moment together. Isabella responds to the Duke's order for Angelo's execution, with: Most bounteous sir: Look, if it please you, on this man condemn'd As if my brother liv'd. I partly think A due sincerity govern'd his deeds Till he did look on me. Since it is so, Let him not die. My brother had but justice, In that he did the thing for which he died: For Angelo, His act did not o' ertake his bad intent And must be buried but as an intent That perish'd by the way. Thoughts are no subjects; Intents, but merely thoughts. (V .1.441-452) The moment when Isabella kneels to plead for her enemy is the play's true climax.

Brook recognized this, and gave Jefford a very famous direction. He instructed her to pause before kneeling "until she felt the audience could take it no longer" .114 This created a superb moment of dramatic tension, as those onstage and in the auditorium alike held their breath to see what she would do. However, what makes a fine dramatic moment is not necessarily that which makes the best textual sense. The Duke has given the order for action. He has already said "Away with him to death" and his last line before Isabella's is "He dies for Claudio's death" (V.1.427 & 441), so there seems little cause for everyone on the stage to be standing stock still, instead of carrying out the clearly issued order. While the dramatic pause may appear to empower Isabella, by having the whole cast hanging on the move she is about to make, the same thing does ensure that, when she makes her plea, it looks unquestionably the result of the Duke's initiative rather than her own. A reading that emphasizes Isabella's autonomy of action, and may be more appropriate to the dynamic arising directly from the lines in the scene, would cast Isabella's "Most bounteous sir" as interrupting the Duke's control of the flow of action, rather than serving it. The line scansion supports this reading, rather than one involving a pause. "Most bounteous sir" is

114 Brook, p.89. 69 not a short line, it is the second half of a split line, making an even pentameter, and therefore implying a quickly picked up cue: DUKE: He dies for Claudio's death.

ISABELLA: Most bounteous sir: (V .1.441)

Probably the most popular explanation for the Duke's machinations in the last act is that he wishes to effect a "transformation" in Isabella. The idea that he rescues her from coldness and teaches her humanity and charity is favoured by such critics as Tillyard, Goddard, Evans, Rossiter, Lever, Hunter, Gless, Frye, Thomas, Taylor and Steward. 115 They see Isabella's plea for Angelo as something the Duke is trying to make her do. Frye thinks that "as soon as she makes this speech we understand that this is really what the whole of the second half of the play has been about. The primary end and aim of everything the Duke is doing is to get that speech out ofher."116 The completely speculative nature of this interpretation has not been acknowledged. There is in fact not one single line that indicates that the Duke is seeking to change Isabella, or that she has been changed at the end. A transformation in Shakespeare is usually flagged ("thou hast tamed a curst shrew" (The Taming ofthe Shrew, V.2.188)), but there is no similar comment on Isabella. The Duke speaks to the audience, and shares his plans as much as any of Shakespeare's characters, and yet he does not mention what these critics take to be the central motif of the final act. The fact that his lines in the final scene actively discourage Isabella from adding her plea to Mariana's is read as ingenious reverse psychology. Bertrand Evans is typical: Says the Duke, pointedly, Against all sense you do importune her. Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact, Her brother's ghost his paved bed would break, And take her hence in horror. (V.1.431-434) 'Should she kneel down in mercy of this fact': it is the prompting of a hesitant pupil ... It has taken much time, shrewd deception, and sharp nudging at the last moment, but the proof is won on the Duke's uncompromising terms.

115 E.M. W. Till yard, 1950; Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning ofShakespeare Volume II (Chicago: Phoenix, 1951); Bertrand Evans, Shakespeare's Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); A.P. Rossiter, 1961; J.W. Lever, 1965; Robert Grams Hunter, 1965; Darryl J. Gless, 1979; Northrop Frye, 1983; Vivian Thomas, 1987; Mark Taylor, 1994; Stephen Marx, 2000. 116 Frye, p.29. 70

Working in mysterious ways, he has transformed an erstwhile 'saint' into a creature of human sympathies and forced her to demonstrate them against odds. 117 Evans was writing forty years ago, but Stephen Marx shows how little has changed - "The Duke refuses [Mariana's plea], secretly playing devil's advocate" - and he concludes: "But the play audience has been shown a secret still hidden from everyone else in Vienna. They have seen how the inner light which [Isabella] now casts was kindled by the Duke." 118 We know from what the Duke has said that he is planning to put Angelo through something rigorous and unpleasant in the final act ("By cold gradation and well balanc'd form,/ We shall proceed with Angelo." (IV.3.99-100)), but the text gives no indication that he is subjecting Isabella to the same kind of process, only, as previously mentioned, that he wants "To make her heavenly comforts of despair" (IV.3.109).

It was George Geckle, in 1971, who first and most comprehensively examined and refuted the transformation interpretation by looking at the responses of the other characters, particularly the Duke to Isabella's words: "Does the Duke, generally acknowledged as the ultimate authority in the play, chastise Isabella for a lack of charity? He does not. " 119 Geckle's thorough analysis seems to have gone either unread or ignored by numerous subsequent critics, though none have put forward a direct refutation of his argument. These critics usually resort to begging the question: presenting Isabella's lines to Claudio as evidence, with the rationale that she is obviously meant to be unsympathetic at this point. The assumption is that the person who says "more than our brother is our chastity'' and "I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,/ No word to save thee" (111.1.145-146) could not be the same person who makes the plea for Angelo's life. In fact, there is no inconsistency if speaking of a person who operates firstly, and before anything else, out of principle. As John Bell said, of his direction of Anna Volska in the role: "Given the person she is, there was nothing else she could do."120 Nick Enright's production also presented Isabella in this way, as someone who operated according to the same ethical code from beginning to end. It was this code that made her reject Angelo's bargain and Claudio's begging when her feelings wanted her to give in and save her brother, and the same code

117 Bertrand Evans, p.218. 118 Marx, p.98. 119 Geckle, "Shakespeare's Isabella", p.167. 120 In interview with the author, 17 June 2002. 71 that made her ask for Angelo's life to be spared, whether or not her personal feelings wanted to see him punished. 121

In Noble's production, when the time came for Isabella's climactic plea, Stevenson gave the performance that would be expected from an actor so intimately connected with the text. She delivered the speech haltingly, as if thinking out each idea as it came to her. Despite its reading of an independent and fiercely intelligent Isabella, this production rested on the idea that her plea is the main goal of the Duke in the last act. Daniel Massey recalls his performance of this scene: The struggle to bring Isabella to her knees was quite literally exhausting. Juliet was wonderful here. In essence, of course, it was a battle of wills. Significantly, he is tougher and harsher with Isabella. Instinctively he knows that he must push her to the limit. He knows her well now, her passion, her stubbornness, above all her sense ofjustice. I remember that when she finally sank to her knees I gave in to an almost trance-like state.122 Given that the Duke is about to expect Isabella to be grateful to him for saving her brother, and agree to marry him, it might seem somewhat uncomfortable, not to say offensive, that his main aim is to bring her to her knees (Penny Gay sees something of Petruchio in

Massey's attitude here123); what sort of man wants to force a woman to kneel to him before he proposes to her? Beyond that, on closer examination, the idea of a battle of wills is difficult to make sense of. How did Isabella and the Duke end up on opposite sides in this scenario? If they are struggling against each other at this point, and the Duke wants Isabella to kneel, that means Isabella wants not to kneel, which means by kneeling she loses the battle. Once again, an action that seems very clearly a win for a strong and independent-minded woman is somehow talked around into a loss for a woman dependent on a man to show her the way.

A possible alternative reading is that the Duke feels he needs to orchestrate a grand and artful re-entrance to leadership that will involve both the shaming and the redemption of Angelo as a public demonstration of his wisdom and authority. This would certainly be a

121 In interview with the author: Nick Enright 15 August 2002, Susan Lyons 25 November 2002. 122 Daniel Massey, "The Duke in Measure for Measure", in Players ofShakespeare 2, ed. Robert Smallwood and Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 13-31, p.29. 123 Gay, p.137. 72 play for power, as Wharton suggests, but it does not rely on the reading that his earlier reluctance to embrace power and its trappings is insincere. It shows a final acceptance of the responsibilities he had been avoiding. Working with this scenario, he would need to withhold from Isabella the fact of Claudio's escape because Angelo's redemption is dependent on his suffering the guilt of his action and the threat of his own execution, and the Duke knows Isabella would never allow such a charade to continue. What he does not take into account is the fact that Isabella can go further than he in enacting the principle of mercy. When he says, "He dies for Claudio's death", he thinks that he will bring Angelo to the block, then reveal Claudio, pardon Angelo and he will have effected a perfect God like act of redemption and forgiveness. When Isabella kneels to plead for Angelo, it takes him completely by surprise and produces his rather clumsy rejection of her plea ("Your suit's unprofitable. Stand up, I say." (V.1.453)), because it did not figure in his plans. It is, however, the one thing that finally humbles him; hence his last minute proposal.

It must be borne in mind that this is purely speculation, for the purpose of finding a reading that makes sense of everybody's actions. Shakespeare keeps the Duke's motives obscure, as well as a large part of his final plans. Conjecture is the order of the day for those interpreting Act V, which is something of a bonus for the theatrical director. The many critics who have described the Duke as testing Isabella to teach her a lesson in forgiveness must also concede that there is no evidence in the text to give them any certainty on this point. The readings of Measure for Measure that centre on this idea (that Isabella learns about mercy from the Duke) neglect an important line in Isabella's first exchange with Angelo that is too specifically constructed to be accidental. When she first pleads for Claudio's life to Angelo, she says: I would to heaven I had your potency, And you were Isabel! Should it then be thus? No; I would tell what 'twere to be a judge, And what a prisoner. (11.2.67-70) When she says this, the likelihood of that scenario ever coming to pass seems non-existent. Then in the last scene Shakespeare sets up a situation where this is precisely what occurs. The fact that Isabella does exactly what she said she would do should not be treated as incidental. 73

Shakespeare's more apparent changes from his sources to the sequence of events at this point in the play had the flow-on effect of creating other more subtle, but more profound, changes. In Cinthio, the Emperor marries Epitia to Iuriste, and her plea for him is based on her fear that it will reflect badly on her if she allows her husband to be executed without intervening for him. Whetstone's slightly less believable version has Cassandra, upon becoming Promos's wife, plead for him out ofnewfound loving devotion. In a colossal act of missing the point, Tillyard cites this change as a flaw in Shakespeare's version, saying of Isabella that "Not having become Angelo's wife, she has no reason to recommend him to mercy as well as to justice". 124 This change, however, is what turns the play from a story about social credit into a story about the power of mercy. Removing the heroine's concern over the appropriate behaviour for a wife makes her action one of pure principle. Interpretations, both literary and performative, that construct Isabella's plea as something she is led to by the Duke minimize its disruptiveness, but also diminish its power and beauty. This is not to say that either approach is definitively right or wrong, only that the choices made on this issue will demonstrate a production's priorities. If a production is centred on the Duke as everybody's redeemer, Isabella's independence of thought and action will appear curtailed, and a production that wishes to maximise Isabella's power will need to show her act of mercy as self-generated. The latter will also shift the emphasis away from the intricacies of the plot, and towards thematic questions of personal ethics, arguably creating a more powerful humanist statement.

Hytner's production definitely operated within this latter scenario; Roger Allam, who played the Duke, said, "I resisted the notion that the Duke teaches Isabella about mercy in this scene. It can be played that way, but we rejected it, and in doing so did not have to bend the text. We felt strongly that Isabella is a positive character."125 The lines in 11.2 in which Isabella clearly states what she would do in Angelo's position are an important clue in the text that validates Josette Simon's interpretation oflsabella as largely unchanged at the end from the person she was in the early scenes. This seemed the basis for Simon's plea: the simple, declared, unaffected principle that had governed her actions all along. In this version "Isabella's plea was an astonishing, unlooked-for event". 126 In Bell's

124 Tillyard, p.132. 125 Roger Allam, "The Duke in Measure for Measure", in Players ofShakespeare 3, ed. Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), 21-41, p.38. 126 Ibid. 74 production, also, with its very cynical Duke, "for the Duke, it came as a complete surprise". 127

Pimlott' s 1994 production seemed to come closest of all to psychological realism, in that the characters genuinely showed how deeply tormenting such events would be to people, if they really happened. This was particularly so in Isabella's relationship with Mariana. Unlike most Marianas, this one did not calmly and cheerfully agree to step in, but rather seemed sickened and grief-stricken throughout, and the two women stuck to each other closely, looking for mutual support in the face of the wall of male authority that was Vienna. Stevenson and Stella Gonet both made much at this point of their bond with Mariana. Gonet became intensely focused on Mariana through much of the final scene, as they comforted each other (see fig. 8). There was a strong sense that her plea for Angelo was for Mariana's sake, and she held her hand throughout her speech to the Duke which was, unusually, performed standing, with Gonet only kneeling after she finished speaking and Mariana moved to Angelo's side. This production is the only one that seemed willing to show what a mess this whole situation had made of the lives of those involved. One effective innovation of Pimlott's was to highlight the isolation oflsabella and Mariana by recruiting unpaid extras to fill the stage during the last scene with "dozens of middle-aged men, clad in gowns, wigs and mortar boards, the embodiment of the male system of the law and government, against which their pleas seemed especially vulnerable". 128 This was in contrast to Boyd's 1998 version, in which Clare Holman barely looked at Mariana, did not touch her at any point, and seemed to have developed no relationship with her whatsoever.

The conclusion of this play (V .1) is open to an exceptionally broad range of possibilities. What is the manner of the Duke's proposal, and can Isabella accept it? In keeping with the desire to tum Isabella into a conventional heroine, the openness of Shakespeare's ending went unnoticed for many years. In spite of her notable lack of a scripted response, Isabella would accept the Duke's proposal through gesture, and leave the stage paired with him, in performances, until 1970. The first recorded instance I have found of this ending being questioned is in John Barton's 1970 production. Estelle Kohler was left alone on stage as

127 John Bell, in interview with the author, 17 June 2002. 128 Peter Holland, English Shakespeares (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), p.209. 75 the other characters exited. 129 The stated interpretation of Barton and Kohler was that Isabella was in no fit emotional state to make such a decision at this time, and she was left wondering what to do. 130 It is interesting to note, however, that audience members tended to see her as having unequivocally rejected the Duke: "He offered his hand to Isabella and she, shocked at his proposal, rejected it."131

None of Shakespeare's plays concludes with lines from a female character (Rosalind speaks the epilogue in As You Like It, but she comments on how unfashionable it is for her to do so, and it is her father who winds up the body of the play). Conventionally, the major authority figure is the one given the final speech. His heroines do, however, usually directly and publicly express love for, or acceptance of, the hero at the end of a comedy, so the absence of such a line in Isabella's case is significant. Barbara Baines has argued that, far from having abandoned her monastic ambitions at the end of the play, Isabella's silence indicates that she is adhering to the rules of a nun of St Clare: "She shows her face but remains silent."132 Charles Lyons saw a different aspect to this formerly eloquent woman becoming a silent figure. He points out that two of the stock female figures of Jacobean comedy were the shrew and the woman made attractive or erotic through her silence. He argues that Isabella through being verbal, but particularly through her railing at Claudio, is initially presented as a shrew figure, who is then changed in order to become a desired object, and describes the Duke as making a decision "to transform Isabella into his own silent woman". 133 There may have been echoes of this for Hack, who sealed his depiction of the Duke as evil politician by having him embrace Isabella on his second proposal, "enfolding her stiff, resisting body within the vast golden robes of his office", as she looked out helpless and panic-stricken. 134 This production showed that in the world of politics you can beat the bad guy and still lose. A similar approach was taken two years

129 Promptbook: Barton production, 1970. Held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 130 Gareth Lloyd Evans, "Directing Problem Plays: Gareth Lloyd Evans Talks to John Barton", Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 63-71. 131 Jane Williamson, "The Duke and Isabella on the Modem Stage", in The Triple Bond, ed. Joseph G. Price (London: Pensylvania State UP, 1975), 151-169, p.169. 132 Barbara Baines, "Assaying the Power of Chastity in Measure for Measure", Studies in English Literature, 30 (1991), 283-301, p.299. 133 Charles Lyons, "Silent Women and Shrews: Eroticism and Convention in Epicoene and Measure for Measure", Comparative Drama, 23 (1990), 123-140, p.133. 134 Philip C. McGuire, Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p.86. 76 earlier by John Bell, who presented a Machiavellian Duke, in a production that "highlighted the absurdity- to modem eyes - of the marriages". 135

If, perhaps, the popularization of the feminist movement prompted those involved in Barton and Rack's productions to consider the ending from Isabella's point of view, and see that she might not want to leap into the arms of this man who has so blatantly been manipulating her, the later 1970s brought other influences to bear. Kyle had a clear sense that Isabella was wrong from the beginning to think that the convent was a suitable life for her. The Duke's discarded friar's robe and Isabella's discarded wimple became symbolic, as each left a life of solitude. Paola Dionisotti, however, found that for her, Isabella's silence was one of exhaustion: "It struck me at the end that Isabella is deeply weary. She hasn't even got the strength to say, 'Claudio - how fantastic to see you. You're not dead after all'."136 At this point Isabella has also just found out that the friar is yet another "seemer". Dionisotti seems in some sense to have felt betrayed by the interpretation imposed on her, an impression picked up by Gay: Ifwe set Michael Pennington's [the Duke's] sense of what he was doing with his part against Paola Dionisotti's, it becomes clear that he and the director had in a sense conspired- simply not questioning the 'natural' decisions of two men working together- to present the play as the Duke's story, an upbeat tale of personal discovery that never stops to question the ethics of his behaviour. 137

Noble's production was more prepared to confront the fact that the Duke has been as deceptive, and as self-deceiving, as anyone else in the play, but he also had a more resilient Isabella. Stevenson paused, then took the Duke's hand, acknowledging what they had shared in the preceding scenes, and leaving no doubt about the resolution of the story. Enright's production also indicated Isabella's acceptance of the Duke's proposal, but from a different motivation. Lyons felt that it was almost a political decision for Isabella, who had experienced a physical attraction to Angelo, but not to the Duke, but saw that she had responsibilities to society. Again, Seiden seems to express the rationale for this production, when he imagines Isabella, in accepting the Duke,

135 Minchinton, p.204. 136 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.39. 137 Gay, p.135. 77

steeling herself to do what, soberly and responsibly, she convinces herself she must do. The conventions of comedy require that Isabella accept the happy ending of marriage, but the far more important psychological and ideological determinants steer Isabella in the direction of difficulty and responsibility, which is to say the not merely personal and facile choice. 138 Enright also wanted to avoid what he considered the excessive bleakness of the conclusion of Bell's production, on which he had assisted some years earlier. While acknowledging it as a legitimate reading to present the concluding marriages as forced and unhappy, Enright wanted to show that another way was also valid. 139

Probably the most radical ending was Hytner's, the only RSC production willing to turn away completely from the conventional comic conclusion. As the Duke remained standing centre stage, and the other characters exited right and left, Simon turned and left upstage centre, walking decisively away from the Duke and the whole of Vienna, into a painted backdrop of green countryside.

Nunn's belief in a happy ending prompted a return to Isabella's acceptance of the Duke, but was problematized by his casting of an Isabella who looked barely more than a schoolgirl. Michael Billington found that "the final wooing of Isabella, although gratefully received, here makes the Duke look dangerously like Humbert Humbert". 140 As a suitable conclusion to Pimlott's intensely emotional production, Gonet slapped the Duke's face, then kissed him hard on the mouth, then turned away, overcome. The effect was powerful, but Alan Dessen notes that, in order to achieve it, Pimlott had to cut the line where Isabella asks the Duke's pardon "that I, your vassal, have employ'd and pain'd / Your unknown sovereignty". 141 The lights went down with all characters still standing on stage, the mess still to be cleaned up, the relationships still to resolve themselves, a further journey still to travel.

In spite of Boyd's production showing a Duke who at first really did want to escape his responsibilities, his return in the final scene was staged as a dramatic and organized coup

138 Seiden, pp.164-165. 139 In interview with the author, 15 August 2002. 140 Michael Billington, Guardian, 20 September 1991. 78 d'etat: as Lucio knocked the Duke's hat off, revealing who he was, the court attendants instantly drew guns and trained them on Angelo, and the Duke resumed his position of authority. Although both Rack's and Boyd's approaches force Isabella into a position as pawn, her response to being treated this way can either condone or subvert such treatment. Boyd rearranged the Duke's final speech so that the proposal came after everyone else had left the stage, removing the traditional problem of the insensitively public nature of his offer. When attempting to gauge a production from descriptions, it is important to remember how varied an impression the same moment can make. The Duke's last action in this Measure was to kiss Isabella. Her response, according to one critic, was to be "sexually awakened, rather than disgusted, by the Duke's amatory overtures",142 while to another she merely "ends up bemused by the Duke".143 Another described how she "allows herself to be kissed and, having done so, puts her fingers on her lips in surprise", 144 while to me it looked more as if she wiped it off. 145 Certainly she turned away, from what emotion it was hard to judge, in a production so minimalist in its approach to emotional expression. The Duke then moved to the door upstage and waited, and after a few moments Isabella went to join him, so the traditional paired exit was maintained after all. Clare Holman, who played Isabella in this production, thinks that her joining with the Duke at the end was central to the whole structure of the play, and Isabella's character: "I felt that the audience should want Isabella to marry the Duke and join the new world rather than go back to the nunnery." She believes Isabella's silence comes from simply having too many emotions· to express at th" 1s moment. 146

The ending of this play has always troubled people. E.A.J. Honigmann knew he was inviting argument when he said that he was "even willing to believe that the marriages that conclude Measure for Measure were not irresponsibly cobbled together because the dramatist needed a happy ending, but are appropriately disturbing at the end of a disturbing play". 147 Though Edward Rocklin is mainly concerned with documenting early

141 Alan C. Dessen, Rescripting Shakespeare: The Text, the Director, and Modern Productions (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002), p.134. 142 Paul Taylor, Independent, 2 May 1998. 143 Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 1 May 1998. 144 Susannah Clapp, Observer, 3 May 1998. 145 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 146 Clare Holman quoted in Maria Evans, p.11. 147 E.A.J. Honigmann, quoted in Edward L. Rocklin, "Measured Endings: How Productions from 1720 to 1929 Close Shakespeare's Open Silences in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 53 (2000), 213-232, p.213. 79 productions, he finds the ending to be ideally constructed for more recent versions, from John Barton's on, that revel in, rather than attempt to conceal, the ambiguity of the play's conclusion: Many performers and critics now see the play's greatness as inhering in the opportunities it offers to create dissonances (which are, or course, in harmony with a dissonance-loving time) which impel us to wrestle with near-tragic dilemmas as we leave the theatre. 148 At a time when sexual politics are publicly discussed to a degree unmatched in previous eras, many productions of Measure for Measure have sought expressions of ideas that are only just being argued through by society today. Modem Isabellas (in contrast, for the most part, to critical discussion not based on performance analysis) frequently find a resonance for this character that goes beyond argument about whether she is virtuous or repressed, or whether that amounts to the same thing. That it is possible, with modem sensibilities regarding politics and sexuality, to find so much material here that can provoke new thoughts on these areas is convincing argument that this text continues to be a valid base from which to create new performances. There is the potential for these performances to go further than any of the productions mentioned here, in showing what a disruptive force to patriarchal smugness Isabella really is. Indeed, it is interesting to note the enthusiasm and warmth with which Isabella is regarded by most actors who have played the role, though it is impossible to tell if there is any element of defensiveness in this. Rutter quotes Paola Dionisotti and Juliet Stevenson as having "found her immediately attractive. 'I always liked her,' says Paola, and Juliet, 'She's wonderful ... She has an awesome sense of integrity"'. 149 Clare Holman was told by a fellow actor "nobody likes her", but came to her own conclusion: "I decide that/ like her."150 Susan Lyons was impressed by her pragmatism, her moral commitment, that always put her own desires last, and her extraordinary energy, that saw her engage with everyone who crossed her path: "She's a bright thing. She looks for something shining in the world, and it's her way of thinking in absolutes that lets her do that."151

148 Rocklin, p.232. 149 Rutter, Clamorous Voices, p.26. 150 Quoted in Maria Evans, p.10. 151 In interview with the author, 25 November 2002. 80

Will any production of this play that attempts a feminist re-reading be undermined by the prominent and controlling role of the Duke? This is the belief of Kathleen McLuskie ("The radical feminist 'interpretation' floated earlier would require a radical rewriting both of the narrative and of the way the scenes are constructed."152), but reviewers who have seen the play on stage have been much more hesitant to tell Isabella that she should have given in to Angelo than those dealing with it exclusively on the page. Studying Isabella in performance, in physical relationships with the many men who try to control her, seems to render flesh both her vulnerability and her courage. Geckle observed recently that the current critical debate surrounding Measure for Measure has tended to retrace the ground explored in previous centuries, but acknowledged that there have been significant new contributions coming from the approaches of new historicism and performance analysis. 153 These, however, have resulted in no greater consensus than in earlier times, and feminism has produced opinions just as contradictory. For theorists of all varieties, Isabella's body remains the battleground it always has been.

152 McLuskie, p.97. 153 George L. Geckle, Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition: Measure for Measure (London: Athlone, 2001), pp.11-25.

III: Cressida's Betrayal

Cressida brings two of the theatre's most dearly adhered-to rules into irreconcilable conflict: the hero is never to be an object of ridicule; the cuckold is a perpetual object of ridicule. Her punishment for creating the awkward situation where the one man is both is to be probably the most abused of all Shakespeare's characters. There are few names a woman can be called that have not been levelled at her. Like Isabella, she challenges notions of expected behaviour for a heroine. Even more distinctly than Isabella, she remains outside the limits of the conventional conclusion to the story of an unruly woman - at the end of the play she is neither re-incorporated into regulated society through marriage, nor punished through death. 1 In performance she has most frequently been reduced to the stereotyped male fantasy of the perpetually sexually accessible woman. This has prompted some feminist critics to argue that it is inappropriate to speak of Cressida as an independent character, that she exists only scene by scene, as a reflection of whatever function she is performing for the men in the play, at the time.2 If the assumption that the men in the play speak with the authoritative voice is rejected, however, a coherent character may emerge, and one who does not fit the stereotype. In spite of, or more likely because of, her unusual place in the list of Shakespeare's central female figures, Cressida was only acknowledged comparatively recently as the complex and challenging character that she is.

1 This, and the fact that Troilus's death is not enacted, have prompted speculation that the play is unfinished. This is unlikely, since both the Quarto and the Folio conclude with a soliloquy from Pandarus that is addressed directly to the audience, showing all the characteristics ofan epilogue, including a warped version of the traditional request for the audience's indulgence: As many as be here of Panders' hall, Your eyes, half out, weep out at Pandar's fall; Or if you cannot weep, yet give some groans, Though not for me, yet for your aching bones. (V.11.47-50) All quotes from the Arden edition, ed. David Bevington (Walton on Thames: Nelson, 1998). E.K. Chambers suggests that the epilogue was not written by Shakespeare, but this theory has not gained support elsewhere (this and other opinions on the ending, and the variation between Q and F on this point, discussed by Gary Taylor, "Troilus and Cressida: Bibliography, Performance and Interpretation", Shakespeare Studies, 15 (1982), 99-136). Chaucer also left Criseyde alive and unpunished at the end of his version. 2 Gayle Greene, "Shakespeare's Cressida: 'A Kind of Self"', in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, ed. C. Lenz, G. Greene and C. Neely (Chicago: Illinois UP, 1980), 133-149; Carol Cook, "Unbodied Figures of Desire", in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), 177-195; but most interestingly Janet Adelman, who admits that she argues elsewhere "for the need to respond to Shakespeare's characters as whole psychological entities", but believes that, in this case, "Cressida as a whole character must be sacrificed" in the "effort to keep Troilus pure". "This Is and Is Not Cressid", in The (M)other Tongue: Essays in Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation, ed. S. Nelson Gamer, C. Kahane and M. Sprengnether (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985), 119-141, p.140. 82

There has probably never been a time when Troilus and Cressida was a popular play for performance, and this is only partly due to its difficult heroine. Its cynical outlook, extended passages of rhetorical argument, and its lack of either a happy ending, or a cathartic tragic resolution, were no doubt just as influential. It is not even certain that it was performed during Shakespeare's lifetime - the original and revised title pages to the 1609 Quarto give conflicting accounts. The original, stating that it had been performed by the King's Men at the Globe, was replaced by a preface suggesting that it had never been performed.3 In 1929 Peter Alexander put forward the notion that it was written specifically for performance at the Inns of Court, for a select audience of intellectuals and professionals, and the most interesting aspect of this theory is that, in spite of the fact that it is openly acknowledged that there is no extra-textual evidence whatsoever to support it, virtually all critics and historians seem to agree that it is most likely the case.4

There continues to be no evidence of performance throughout the remainder of the seventeenth century, the eighteenth or the nineteenth.5 Dryden included it in his series of adaptations, in a version that was performed in 1679, entitled Truth Found Too Late. He abandoned almost the whole of the original text, making sure Cressida was only thought to be false, when she was in fact faithful, and having her kill herself at the end to prove her integrity. There were a few performances in central Europe from 1898 but, astonishingly for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first performance of the play, as it was written, for which there is indisputable evidence was in 1907, in a costumed, rehearsed reading at the Great Queen St Theatre in London, under the direction of Charles Fry, who took the role of Thersites. The play was given a higher profile staging by William Poel in 1912, and began to enter the repertoire. A side effect of this unusual stage history is that any critic writing before 1907 - and no doubt many for some time after that - was most likely to be writing purely from the page, without ever having seen the play in performance.

3 Detailed in Bevington, introduction to Troilus and Cressida, pp.1-3. 4 This theory is examined in greater depth by W.R. Elton, in his Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), in which he details what is known about the plays that were performed at the Inns, and compares this with the form and possible topical references in Shakespeare's play. Information on stage history from the Arden edition, pp.87-117; the Cambridge edition, ed. Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1957); Theatre for a New Audience website (www.tfana.org/2001/troilus/chron); and the Australian Theatre Record (Sydney: UNSW, School of Theatre & Film, 1989, 1994). 83

The earliest productions discussed here will be Glen Byam Shaw's for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1954 and Tyrone Guthrie's at the Old Vic in 1956, the most recent Michael Bogdanov's touring production for the Bell Shakespeare Company, in Australia, in 2000. The main shift in the nature of the portrayal of Cressida on stage over this period, has been from an assumption that she is a basically simple character, understood by all, to a sense that she is somewhat more complicated and mysterious, though the manner in which this has expressed itself has varied enormously.

Among Shakespeare's women, probably only Cleopatra has had as many fears and fantasies projected onto her by those who have staged her, but Cressida has suffered more from reductive staging decisions that depict her actions without context and her behaviour without motivation. Until 1965, for both critics and practitioners, there was only one way to see Cressida, and this was to dismiss her as innately wanton and shallow. The character of Cressida underwent little scrutiny from critics until about thirty years ago. Examinations of the text took the legitimacy of her reputation for granted, and display a kind of circular logic that fails to provide a treatment of the character corresponding to that given to Shakespeare's male characters: she betrays Troilus because she is a slut, she is a slut because she betrays Troilus, and further elaboration is deemed unnecessary. The casual use of the most pejorative language sheds little light on the character, but more on the prejudices of the critic. Calling her a "mere wanton", a "heartless coquette", or a "scheming, cold-blooded profligate"6 sounds extreme, but it is the number of serious academic writers who unselfconsciously use terms like "slut" and ''whore" that seems to suggest that reaction to this character is more personal than reasoned. The basic problem with this type of commentary is how inadequately it communicates information. Kay Stanton, in her recent study of Shakespeare's use of the word "whore", attempts to come to grips with the slippery nature of the term: It can be used, by Shakespeare and currently, with any of the following primary meanings, and more: professional prostitute; promiscuous woman; woman who has had sexual relations with more than one man; woman who has had or seems to want sexual relations with a man other than the one laying claim to her; woman who has had, or is believed to have had, sexual relations with men, or even only

6 All F.S. Boas, Shakespeare and His Predecessors (New York: C. Scribner, 1896), pp.375-376, but see also Introduction, note 65. As expressed by James O'Rourke: "Cressida's detractors are too numerous to cite." "Rule in Unity and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 43 (1992), 139-158, p.140. 84

one man, without marriage; woman who, consciously or unconsciously, provokes sexual desire in men; woman who has, or attempts to take or maintain, control over her own sexuality, integrity or life; and woman who has gone, or expressed a desire to go, into territories, geographical and/or professional, claimed exclusively formen.7 The multiplicity of definitions renders the word all but useless as a descriptive tool; it explains nothing about a character's behaviour except that the critic finds it immoral. Stanton goes on to point out that care should be taken to note which characters in the plays use the word, and of whom, as "even among the many near-synonyms found in Shakespeare's works, it is the term with the most abusive punch, the 'dirtiest' word". 8 In this play, although numerous characters use the word "whoreson" as a generalized curse, the word ''whore" is used by only two: Diomedes uses it once, referring to Helen; Thersites uses it eight times, referring to Helen, Cressida, the war, and his own mother. Thersites, then, is the only character who uses this word of Cressida, which means that critics who use the word are authorising Thersites' point of view. Thersites slanders virtually everybody in the play, but critics who give authority to his judgement on Cressida and Helen only rarely make an argument for the legitimacy of doing so where anyone else is concerned.

Certainly, everyone appeared to be aware of the tradition that Cressida was an icon representing the faithless woman, and the assumption was that Shakespeare was not in a position to challenge this tradition, should he have wished to do so. W.W. Lawrence argues that Shakespeare was forced to make Cressida an unsympathetic character due to the weight of conventional knowledge of the story: "The story was too familiar to alter; its very popularity had stereotyped it."9 He has no doubt, however, that Shakespeare embraced this perspective on Cressida. 10 A similar opinion is given by Daniel Seltzer, who acknowledges that his ideas on how the part should be played are based on this, rather than the text: "Cressida must parade happily among the Grecian generals, who kiss her 'in general,' and receive Ulysses's coldly perceptive insult. Whatever the actress has made of Cressida earlier,

7 Kay Stanton, "'Made to write "whore" upon?': Male and Female Use of the Word 'Whore' in Shakespeare's Canon", in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, Ed. Dympna Callaghan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 80-102, p.81. 8 Ibid. 9 W.W. Lawrence, Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (London: Macmillan, 1931 ), p.131. 10 One odd inaccuracy made by Lawrence, one of the most quoted authorities on the problem plays, is his conviction that Cressida is a Greek girl, who has somehow wound up in Troy, and is sent home, rather than away from home. Nor is it a passing slip: he stresses the point of it, suggesting that she represents Greek as opposed to Trojan values. This error remained uncorrected in the 1960 edition. 85 she is now the brassy and degraded slut the Elizabethans had been taught to expect."11 Neither Lawrence nor Seltzer considers the possibility that the expectations of the Elizabethans may have been subverted ( or played with) by Shakespeare.

From 1965 to around the end of the 1980s there ran two strands of argument, and of performance, the first continuing the tradition of dismissiveness, the second beginning to place Cressida's words and actions within the context both of the words and actions of the other characters, and of the patriarchal power structures at work in the world of the play. Pioneers of this line of argument were Jan Kott and Joseph Papp in the 1960s and R.A. Yoder and Grant Voth and Oliver Evans in the 1970s. 12 Debate surrounding this issue only really began to flourish in the 1980s. In spite of this gradual trend moving towards sympathy for Cressida, date of writing is by no means an accurate guide to what to expect from a critic. As early as 1884 Bernard Shaw called her "most enchanting, Shakespeare's first real woman", 13 and as late as 1987 Vivian Thomas repeatedly describes those who treat Cressida as a prostitute as seeing her "true nature". 14 The gender of the critic is likewise no reliable guide to his or her opinion. 15 From the beginning of the 1990s the traditional way of describing and performing her seems to have broken down almost entirely, giving way to discussions based on psychology, feminism or new historicism. This is not to say that analysts are no longer critical of Cressida, but rather that the criticism tends to be informed by an acknowledgement of the complexity of the influences on the development of her character. 16

11 Daniel Seltzer, Introduction to Troilus and Cressida (New York: Signet, 1963), p.xxxi. 12 Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1965); Joseph Papp, "Directing Troilus and Cressida", in The Festival Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida (New York: Macmillan 1967), 23-72; R.A. Yoder, "Sons and Daughters of the Game: An Essay on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 11-25; Grant L. Voth and Oliver H. Evans, "Cressida and the World of the Play", Shakespeare Studies, 8 (1975), 231-239. 13 Bernard Shaw, Shaw on Shakespeare, ed. Edwin Wilson (London: Cassell, 1962), p.186. 14 Vivian Thomas, The Moral Universe ofShakespeare's Problem Plays (New Jersey: Barnes & Noble, 1987), ff-108-112. As recently as 1997, Nancy McNeely deals with Cressida in the traditional, dismissive fashion, describing her as a "selfish, egocentric princess figure". "Women's Quest for Identity: Folklore and Fairytale Archetypes in Shakespearean Comedy and Romance" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Southern Illinois, 1997), p.30. Few princesses in literature have been treated in a similar way to Cressida's being handed over to the Greeks, except possibly her fellow Trojan, Hesione, who was put outside for a dragon to snack on. 16 Detailed overviews of the play's critical history can be found in articles by Claire M. Tylee, "The Text of Cressida and Every Ticklish Reader: Troilus and Cressida, The Greek Camp Scene", Shakespeare Survey, 41 (1989), 63-76; and Sharon Harris, "Feminism and Shakespeare's Cressida: '/fl be false ... "', Women's Studies, 18 ( 1990), 65-82. 86

Although critics began to analyse textual complexities in Cressida's role from the mid-1960s, and became less likely to dismiss her, the above examples demonstrate that until the late 1980s there continued to be those who did not give weight to the alternative readings of her character. The same can be said of the role in performance. Whatever the actor playing the part may bring to it, statements about Cressida's character will inevitably be made by the director, and also by the (often underestimated) power of the designer. The result of this is that of the eight productions of this play staged by the RSC, it was not until the most recent, in 1998, that Cressida was not dressed like a vamp or a prostitute for at least one scene. Carol Rutter has pointed out that a designer who dresses Cressida as a whore can override the capacity of the text or the actor to grant her complexity: "Cressida was as she was designed. And the design ironed out her contradictions."17 In this way, the history of Shakespeare's Cressida as represented onstage presents a number of characteristics common to many productions. This chapter will look at the relationship between the critical history and theatrical practice pertaining to Cressida. It will provide a close examination of the text, in order to compare it with numerous stagings from the last half-century, and assess whether these shared characteristics can be ascribed to the text, or whether their source lies elsewhere. It will then seek to estimate the impact which feminist thought has had on the character in performance. It also puts forward some possible alternative readings, based on the premise that the viewpoint of the male characters is not necessarily the same as the author's.

Productions in Britain in the decade leading up to 1960 showed a strong homogeneity in their presentation of Cressida. Muriel Pavlow, directed by Glen Byam Shaw in 1954, was costumed and made up like a Delilah from an epic movie of the period (fig. 10). Although Tyrone Guthrie's 1956 Old Vic production employed an Edwardian setting, Cressida was fundamentally the same. Rosemary Harris played her as an experienced vamp, and was shown as "having an erotic liaison with her manservant before she seduced Troilus". 18 Dorothy Tutin, in the 1960 production co-directed by Peter Hall and John Barton (which was credited with taking a radical, new approach to the play), showed costume, hair and makeup remarkably similar to Pavlow's, and their publicity shots involve much in the way oflanguid lounging and lascivious looks (fig. 11). 19 Both the 1954 and 1960 productions used a

17 Carol Chillington Rutter, Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage (London: Routledge, 2001), p.115. 18 Tylee, p.67. This is presumably in 1.3, in her scene with Alexander. 19 Production photographs held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. Fig. 10

Fi g. 11

Fig. I 0: Muriel Pav low as Cressida, w ith Pandarus, 195 4 Fig. I I: Dorothy T utin, 1960, showin g s imilarities to Pavlow, such as pseudo-Grecian draping of the dress, hair curl ed and piled up, and elaborate eye makeup. 87 romanticized Grecian design for the costumes, and presented a Cressida who was not only wanton from the outset, but obviously so. Pavlow played Cressida as "one whom the audience at first glance is able to write off as perfect harlot".20 Reviewers considered that "Miss Muriel Pavlow is in too great a hurry to reveal to the audience that Cressida is but a light woman",21 and that "it hardly seems permissible to tip the wink so soon to the audience".22 Dorothy Tutin was, if anything, even more eager to signal her seductiveness: "Her Cressida proclaims herself a sexy bit from the first moment she comes writhing onto the stage."23 There was unanimity from the reviewers on this point, who thought that "visually, her Cressida may have been too obviously or too early a seductress from an exotic film",24 "from the moment of her first entry it was made manifest that this Cressida was a lewd minx",25 and "Miss Dorothy Tutin's light and fickle Cressida makes it clear from the very beginning that she will, when given the opportunity, prove herself a 'daughter of the game"'.26

When Barton revisited the play in 1968, and again when directing with the assistance of Barry Kyle in 1976, his initial conception of Cressida as a willing and obvious sexual plaything from her first appearance remained unvaried. Helen Mirren, in her very first scene, was "on the point of seducing her uncle before Troilus",27 while Francesca Annis in 1976 was "demonstrating from the start that she knows herself well enough to realize that she is not to be trusted".28 In his long association with the play, then, John Barton seems to have displayed remarkably little development in his interpretation of Cressida's role. His main shift seems to have been from the stylistic to the symbolic, as represented by Annis, who was disrobed by Diomedes in Act IV, to reveal to the Greek generals that somewhere between Troy and the Greek camp she had transformed into a "Greek courtesan" (see fig. 13 and fig. 14). In the RSC's next production of the play, in 1981, Terry Hands also had Cressida (Carol Royle in her first stage role) unwrapped by Diomedes for the Greeks to reveal a silky, seductive gown

20 Richard David, "Stratford 1954", Shakespeare Quarterly, 5 (1954), 385-394, p.390. 21 Times, 14 July 1954. 22 Theatre World, 24 July 1954. 23 Punch, 10 August 1960. 24 John Russell Brown, "Three Directors: A Review of Recent Productions", Shakespeare Survey, 14 (1961): 129-137, p.130. 25 W.A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph, 27 July 1960. 26 Financial Times, 21 August 1960. 27 Irving Wardle, Times, 9 August 1968. 28 Richard David, Shakespeare in the Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978), p.125. F ig . 14

Fig. 13

Fig. 12

Fig. I2 : H elen Mirren as Cressida, 1962> . Fig. 13: Francesca Annis, 1976, dressed as an ancient Greek courtesan fo r IV.5 . Fi g. 14 : Francesca Annis, 1 976, before C ressida's transformati on. 88

(not the one she was wearing in the previous scene, leaving Troy).29 Only twenty years ago, then, the image of Cressida as eager to embrace Ulysses's assessment of her as naturally wanton remained the default option. In fact, every Stratford Cressida from Muriel Pavlow in 1954 to Carol Royle in 1981 seems to have been required to respond enthusiastically to the advances of any man on stage.

These same productions have often margianalized Cressida, and/or the whole love plot. The simplest way the marginalizing of Cressida has been effected is through cuts to her lines. Cressida is not a large part to begin with, and directors such as Barton, particularly in his 1968 version, have often reduced the voice she has. In Barton's productions, "wars and lechery states a relationship between the armed camps, rather than the two lovers, who become a species of sub-plot". 30 Prioritizing the war story over the love story will have a more drastic effect on Cressida than it will on Troilus, who is involved in both strands. In the production for the RSC's opening season in 1960, where Barton co-directed with Peter Hall, this emphasis was regarded by some as a strength: "Their collaboration rendered a unified vision of the play that ameliorated its troublesome structure. In particular, they found in Hector and Achilles, rather than the titular lovers, the linchpin that held the plot together."31 Also, "the essential soundness of the production lies in its gradual isolation of Hector and Achilles, symbols of the conflict between chivalry and brutal opportunism to which the ruin of Troilus by faithless Cressida is secondary''.32 The consequent lessening of Cressida's role was not considered. In 1968 Helen Mirren's breasts were given greater prominence than her voice, with her lines cut down as substantially as her dress (fig. 12).33 Terry Hands was another who made large cuts to Cressida's banter with her uncle in 1.2,34 but Glen Byam Shaw's earlier 1954 production went even further and cut the whole of her final soliloquy, which is normally the last time the audience hears what Cressida has to say. 35 Of course, the less a character says, the more she will be interpreted according to how she looks, or what others say about

29 Promptbook: Hands production, 1981. The action of Diomedes removing her cloak is noted in the promptbook, which also notes, at the end ofIV.4: "Cressida's dresser- quick change." Costumes shown in production photographs, held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 30 Ralph Berry, Changing Styles in Shakespeare (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), p.50. 31 Michael L. Greenwald, Directions by Indirections: John Barton of the Royal Shakespeare Company (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), p.66. 32 Times, 27 July 1960. 33 Promptbook: Barton production, 1968. Held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. One example is the complete removal of the passage in IV.4, where Troilus and Cressida exchange tokens of faith. 34 Promptbook: Hands production, 1981. For instance, the whole ofl.2.81 to 1.2.109 was cut. 35 Promptbook: Shaw production, 1954. Held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. V.2.112-120 is cut. Cressida is noted as exiting at the same time as Diomedes. 89 her. It is also possible to marginalize a character through the re-arrangement of scenes: the running of IV.2 into IV.4 became almost standard practice at the RSC from 1948 to 1990. Cressida appears in both scenes, but by removing the scene that interrupts them, two separate movements for Cressida become one action, and she has to shift from refusing to leave, to preparing to leave in the space of a line. Blocking and costuming in productions such as Barton's of 1960 and 1976, and Ian Judge's of 1996 have privileged the male body over the female, making a spectacle of the male form, but without the suggestion that it was for the benefit of the active female gaze of Cressida or Helen, who were generally kept well to stage right or left. As Berry concluded, "On the whole, the military and political situation has tended to interest directors, rather than the broken idyll of Troilus and Cressida."36

This was less true of Howard Davies's production in 1985, which was also unusual in choosing a specific and accurately designed period for his version- the Crimean War (fig. 15). This was intended to highlight the grim reality of war, and made the lovers more a victim of their society's conflict than of their own weaknesses. In the RSC's next production, however, Sam Mendes returned to the pattern of marginalizing Cressida, though the method of doing so was less easy to define. In theory it is impossible to construct a neutral performance; a production is always choosing to do some things and not others. Amanda Root's Cressida, however, appeared to achieve the impossible. From the point when Troilus handed her over to Diomedes until her final scene, she seemed to show no response at all to anything that was happening to her, giving a performance as unadorned as her white dress. In a production that was jammed full of visual signifiers, such as Achilles' black leather, Helen wrapped up as a golden package, and Simon Russell Beale's astonishingly eclectic Thersites, wearing a dirty raincoat and leather skull cap, with his jester's bauble stuffed in a plastic bag - Cressida looked like a blank page that briefly took on the stamp ofTroilus, when he placed his army coat around her shoulders to send her to the Greeks.

The many productions in the final decade of the twentieth century (beginning with Mendes's in 1990) demonstrate how prominent a place in the canon this play now holds. For the RSC, Ian Judge in 1996 directed Victoria Hamilton ( fig. 16), in a production of monumental sets and leather costumes; and most recently, in 1998, Michael Boyd set the play in modem times in a place that was probably Northern Ireland, with Jayne Ashbourne as Cressida (fig. 17).

36 Berry, Changing Styles, p.50. Fig. 15

F ig. 16

Fig. I 5: Juliet Stevenson, 1985, as a new kind of Cressida. Fig. I 6: Victoria Hamilton, in one of her many different costumes, with Troilus, 1996. 90

While Trevor Nunn never directed this play in his time at the RSC, he did in his first year as Artistic Director of the Royal National Theatre (1999), with Sophie Okonedo as Cressida (fig. 18).

There have only ever been three productions in Australia. The first was by Grin and Tonic in Brisbane in 1989, in modem dress, directed by Bryan Nason. Jane Menelaus was "a warm, essentially sincere Cressida, a victim of men and war, but determined to survive even though her love for Troilus be called into question".37 The second was a semi-professional production in Perth, in 1994, in which John Milson directed Sarah McNeill in the role. The third was produced by the Bell Shakespeare Company in 2000, with Michael Bogdanov directing and Blazey Best as Cressida (fig. 19). Bogdanov's production was done with an eclectic modem design, and an emphasis on media technology. The women wore mini skirts and high heels, and engaged in a bout of mud wrestling inserted in Act IV.

Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida is structurally unusual in its virtually even balance between its two plots: a love story and a war story run parallel, each involving ideas of betrayal, conflicting loyalties, hierarchies, people as commodities and the personal loss that accompanies conflict between nations. Each incorporates imagery of food, disease, fragmentation (particularly of body parts), and trade. The setting of the Trojan War fuels the war story, which involves the Greek attempt to persuade Achilles, their greatest warrior, to rejoin the fighting, from which he has retired out of his great pride. As the Greeks try to seduce Achilles back to their cause, the love story creates thematic parallels of seduction and loyalty, as it unites Cressida (the daughter of a priest who has defected to the Greek side) with Troilus, the son of Troy's king. They are encouraged in their affair by Cressida's uncle Pandarus, whose actions parallel a combination of the schemes of Ulysses, and the low-comic commentary of Thersites in the war story. Though, at first, Cressida tells the audience that she will not confess to Troilus the love she has for him, this changes in the first scene they have together. They are bedded at the end of Act III, but Act IV begins with Cressida's father demanding that, as payment for his service, the Greeks should trade a Trojan warrior they have captive, for his daughter. This is agreed upon without consultation with the lovers, and Cressida is handed over to the Greeks, despite her protests, having time only to exchange tokens of faith with Troilus. Their use of a glove and a sleeve demonstrates that the world

37 John Harris, Daily Sun, 31 March 1989. Fig. 17

F ig. 1 8

Fi g. 19

Fig. I 7: Jayne Ashbourne w ith Troilus a nd Pandarus, 1998. Fig. 18 : Sophie Okenedo w ith Troilus and Pandarus, 1999. Fig. 13: Blazey Best, 2000, in fur coat and nothing e lse fo r IV.5. 91

Shakespeare has created for the play is definitely not ancient Greek, but Elizabethan, via the medieval. Cressida is escorted to the Greek camp by the Greek hero Diomedes, and greeted on arrival by kisses from each of the Greek generals in tum. Visiting the Greek camp to watch a duel between Hector and Ajax, Troilus asks Ulysses to take him to where he can watch Cressida unobserved. He sees her giving his favour to Diomedes, and is overcome with rage at her treachery, vowing to take revenge on Diomedes. This is the last time Cressida is seen, though she later sends a letter to Troilus. He tears it up without sharing its words with the audience, so we have no opportunity to hear what it was she said.

There has never been consensus on the play's generic classification. The publishers of the Quarto called it a history on the title page and a comedy in the preface, while the Folio editors were apparently planning to place it with the tragedies, then decided to set it between the histories and the tragedies. Oscar Campbell argues that it is a comical satire, a recognized genre of the time employed by Jonson and others, with its own set of conventions. His argument is persuasive, though it could be suggested that he oversimplifies the nature of the subjects being satirized: he believed both lovers were shown as being punished for their unsanctified sexual love.38 Classified as a problem play to appease the need to classify, it has been acknowledged that Troilus and Cressida really stands alone among Shakespeare's plays. It is the only play that ends with the protagonists neither united and reconciled, nor dead.

Although incorporated into the legend of the fall of Troy, Cressida was a medieval creation, anchored in the genre of courtly love. 39 Characters named Troilus, Pandarus and Calchas appear in the Iliad, but not in the form finally ascribed to them. No-one with the name Cressida appears in any ancient Greek text, and it appears the character was derived from two separate characters in Homer, Chryses and Briseis. Both these were Trojan girls taken by the Greeks as spoils of battle, Chryses being allotted to Agamemnon and Briseis to Achilles. Chryses is the daughter of a priest of Apollo, and consequently the Greeks are struck with plague until they allow her father to ransom her. Agamemnon, feeling cheated, appropriates Achilles' Briseis, and this is the cause of Achilles' withdrawal from battle, which in

38 Oscar James Campbell, Comica/l Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino: Huntington, 1938). 39 For a more detailed discussion of the literary history and development ofCressida, see Poonam Trivedi, "Shakespeare's Problem Plays and Problem Women: Feminist Contexts" (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Birmingham, 1988), pp.264-295. 92

Shakespeare's version is ascribed simply to his pride. The Trojan girl who transfers her affections from the Trojan Troilus to the Greek Diomedes after being traded to the Greeks was invented by Benoit de Sainte-Maure in 1490, and called Briseida. Writing in the courtly love tradition, Sainte-Maure's primary interest lay not in Briseida, or even Troilus, but in Diomedes and his long and arduous suit to the resisting lady. Versions followed from Lygate, Caxton and Boccaccio, usually within the context of a larger narrative on the Trojan War.

By Shakespeare's day the story had become very popular, with the best known version being Chaucer's. It is Chaucer who first gives his heroine a name approximating Shakespeare's: Criseyde. At the end of Chaucer's poem, Criseyde is still being courted by a besotted Diomedes, while Troilus is killed in battle, and looks down from heaven at the world, realising that love of God is the only love that really matters, and his earthly anxieties were trivial. After Chaucer, the poet Henryson objected to the story ending with a faithless, and yet unpunished heroine, and wrote the Testament ofCresseid to correct the error, in which Diomedes leaves Cresseid and she is struck by leprosy.

Cressida has always existed primarily as a symbol. As E. Talbot Donaldson describes it, "From Benoit de Sainte-Maure, who invented her, up to Dryden, who destroyed her by making her faithful, the Cressid figure had only a single raison d'etre, her infidelity''.40 Shakespeare played extensively with the audience's assumed familiarity with the tale, and the traditional symbolic value of the characters. Linda Charnes has written in detail of how Shakespeare's characters seem to be at some level aware of their expected roles, and to acknowledge that they are fated to behave in certain ways. Long speeches from Troilus, Cressida and Pandarus express this expectation, as each calls upon the world to regard them as icons of their behaviour: "Let all constant men be Troiluses, all false women Cressids, and all brokers-between panders! Say 'Amen"' (IIl.2.197-199). 41 Although most commentators believe Shakespeare likely to have used Chaucer as his main source, Cressida's cry of confusion to Diomedes of "I shall be plagued" (V .2.111) hints at familiarity with the destiny constructed for her by Henryson. Shakespeare, however, chose Pandarus as the one to conclude the play in a state of disease, while the last time we hear Cressida's name occurs as

40 E. Talbot Donaldson, "Cressid False, Criseyde Untrue: An Ambiguity Revisited", in Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance, ed. Maynard Mack and George deforest Lord (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982), 67-83, p.68. 41 Linda Chames, "So Unsecret to Ourselves: Notorious Identity and the Material Subject in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 40 (1989), 413-440. 93

Diomedes instructs his squire to present to her Troilus' s horse, to show "I am her knight by proof' (V.5.5). He seems to have actively rejected the strategy of ending the play with the punishment of wrongdoing, a conclusion that might have been less perplexing to traditionalists. This gives Hyder Rollins cause to suspect another author: "Yet we could feel surer that Shakespeare was responsible for all of the play ifhe had punished Cressida, - if in portraying her he had unmistakably shown bitterness and hatred."42 A failure to share Rollins's bitterness and hatred towards a character, however, may not be regarded by all as a flaw, and the play's rejection of such conventions of plot form, scene structure, and moralizing makes it seem challenging, and far ahead of its time.

The balance between the love and war plots, and the unusual execution of the love plot, mean that Cressida has only a few scenes in which the audience can follow her story. Troilus and Pandarus discuss her virtues in the play's first scene, but the audience sees her for the first time in I.2, talking to her servant, Alexander, then joined by Pandarus to watch the Trojan soldiers return from the day's battle. She and Troilus then have their long-awaited tryst in III.2. The morning after and her forced parting from Troilus are depicted in IV.2 and IV.4, which run directly onto her entrance to the Greek camp in IV.5. Most unusually, her last scene occurs early in Act V. This is the infamous "betrayal scene", where her assignation with Diomedes is observed by Troilus and Ulysses, and also by Thersites, the play's scabrous chorus figure. Although the play runs on for another nine scenes, its heroine is offstage throughout, making only a proxy appearance in the form of a letter delivered by Pandarus to Troilus. He discards it without reading it aloud, underlining Cressida's gradual removal from the position where she communicated directly with the audience, as she did in her Act I soliloquy.

It is not Cressida, however, whom the audience meets first, but Troilus and, like Isabella, she is discussed before she appears. Also as with Isabella, the audience's understanding of Cressida will be influenced by the context provided by key male characters. A romanticized view ofTroilus is more likely to produce a harsh view of Cressida, but there is significant evidence in the text that binds Troilus to its many other posers, dissemblers and self deceivers, suggesting the validity of a more ambivalent interpretation. Troilus's great failure

42 Hyder E. Rollins, The Troilus-Cressida Story from Chaucer to Shakespeare (New York: Haskell House, 1972), p.47. 94 as a tragic hero is his failure to find fault in himself. He is most unusual among Shakespeare's men in that he does not learn anything about himself from his experiences with Cressida. He "suffers without gaining insight", as Stephen Lynch discerned, maintaining "steadfast fidelity to extraordinarily idealistic illusions about himself'.43 Perhaps the explanation for this is that there was no intention of setting him up to be the "ideal lover" or "romantic hero", as many (and as diverse a range as Coleridge in 1835, G. Wilson Knight in

1930, Peter Ure in 1963 and Angela Pitt in 1981 44) have claimed; but rather the possibility of this view is subverted at every opportunity. Close examination ofTroilus's words and actions demonstrates how poor a candidate he is for such a role.

Troilus and Cressida is structured as a play of contradictions. It begins with "a prologue armed" (Prologue.23), then immediately offsets this warlike image in the first scene, with Troilus leaving the battle, declaring that he will not fight today. When the audience first sees Troilus, he has left his comrades on the battlefield because he says he is too much in love to fight. When Aeneas asks ''wherefore not afield?", he replies "Because not there. This woman's answer sorts, I For womanish it is to be from thence" (I.1.101-103). The scene begins with Troilus extolling the virtues of his ladylove, and describing his passionate devotion to her, but it ends with his using expressions that display a lack of respect for women in general. This must tell the audience something about Troilus's attitude to women. Marianne Novy has engaged with this aspect ofTroilus's character in her examination of gender relations in Shakespeare: The lines reveal not only self-criticism, but also condescension towards women; this is especially obvious because in the scene where these lines occur so much of the dialogue is about Cressida. When Troilus moves from his description of her as a pearl to his snappy comeback to Aeneas, we see his ambivalence toward women - his share in the cultural ambivalence that both glorifies and subordinates Helen.45 Novy is restrained in describing Troilus's use of the word "womanish" to mean both illogical and cowardly as "condescension".

43 Stephen J. Lynch, "The Idealism of Shakespeare's Troilus", South Atlantic Review, 51 (1986), 19-29, p.27. 44 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in Discussions ofShakespeare's Problem Comedies, ed. Robert Ornstein (Boston: Heath, 1961), 1-2; G. Wilson Knight, The Wheel ofFire: Interpretations ofShakespearean Tragedy (London: Methuen, 1930); Peter Ure, William Shakespeare: the Problem Plays (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961 ); Angela Pitt, Shakespeare's Women (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1981 ). 45 Marianne Novy, Love's Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984 ), p.111. 95

A.P. Rossiter calls the Cressida who is introduced in 1.2 a "chatty, vulgar little piece",46 but he offers no evidence that she is more chatty or vulgar than any of Shakespeare's other witty women. He falls prey to the widespread tendency to speak in a general sense of her vulgarity, her duplicity, her lasciviousness, without citing any lines in the text that indicate these things. As Donaldson observed, "Editors are occasionally too busy blushing at her words to tell us exactly what they're blushing at."47 Robert Presson takes this proclivity to its extreme when he asserts that "Shakespeare has portrayed Cressida from the start as a prostitute".48 Unlike the term ''whore", which (as noted previously) has a highly elastic meaning, the term prostitute usually applies only to someone who is paid, by some means, for sex. As Cressida derives no material gain whatever from her liaisons, and transfers her affections only once, it is difficult to see how she fulfils the definition of the term. In her first scene, she does refer to her uncle as a bawd, but it is highly conjectural that this is an expression of approval or complicity, when a more likely reading is that she is remonstrating with him. Although Presson goes on to say that "by her words, and the words of others ... her nature is clearly revealed. Her conversation with her uncle while the pair wait for Troilus to return from the battle, suggests her type",49 he quotes not a single line from the play itself to support what he says. His accusation, echoed by others, is that during this scene she is immodest and engages in bawdy talk: "She engages in bantering remarks, first with her page and then with Pandarus; with the latter her conversation becomes increasingly suggestive."50 "Cressida is seen ... engaging in bawdy banter with her servant Alexander and Pandarus."51 And yet, her side of the exchange with her servant consists almost entirely of questions, and does not include even one line of bawdy or a perceptible double entendre.52 Her subsequent conversation with Pandarus, in which Pitt describes her as "cracking a few lewd jokes with her uncle",53 is

46 A.P. Rossiter, Angel with Horns and Other Shakespeare Lectures (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1961), p.132. 47 E. Talbot Donaldson, The Swan at the Well: Shakespeare Reading Chaucer (New Haven: Yale UP, 1985), p.75. 48 Robert K. Presson, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Legends of Troy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), p.132. 49 Ibid. 5°Carolyn Asp, "Th' Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame", Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 345-357, p.352. 51 Thomas, p.111. 52 Cressida's only line to Alexander that is not a question is in the following exchange, about Hector: ALEXANDER: They say he is a very man per se, And stands alone. CRESSIDA: So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs. (1.2.15-18) The belief that there must be something bawdy in any conversation Cressida has is evidenced by Bevington, whose note to this line reads, "She may imply a sexual meaning as well; 'stand' is often bawdy" (p.140). It is not Cressida, however, who uses the word "stand", but Alexander, and Bevington does not specify what sexual meaning she could be implying. 53 Pitt, p.145. 96 mainly devoted to using her ready wit to deflect her uncle's innuendoes, and avoid responding seriously to his many invitations to discuss Troilus's virtues. Her most bawdy lines come in reply to his exasperated remark, prompted by her constant evasions, that no-one can tell which way she lies, when she answers, "upon my back to defend my belly" (1.2.251 ), perhaps showing that she feels a need to defend herself, and goes on to imply that, if she were to fall pregnant, she hopes she could trust him not to reveal it (another example of her guardedness). The slenderness of the evidence tendered in order to bring her character into disrepute can become almost comic. Terence Hawkes considers her "coquettish" and "interested in other men" because she watches the Trojan troops return from the battle, and finds her "even capable of duplicity in the matter" because "she finds her own statement made in badinage with Pandarus, 'To say the truth, true and not true' perfectly acceptable".s4 As a reply to Pandarus's comment on Troilus's complexion, "Faith, to say truth, brown and not brown" (1.2.93), Cressida is clearly teasing her uncle over his tortured phrasing, not saying something she regards as "perfectly acceptable" at all.

The trouble is partly that lines that are witty and cheeky in the mouth of Viola or Portia are taken to suggest anything from calculation to nymphomania on Cressida's part. Donaldson astutely comments that, since no one has invented a scatologometer by which to establish standards of indecency, we cannot measure Cressida's bawdiness against that of heroines of better reputation. She does, however, appear no more prominently in Eric Partridge's study of Shakespearean obscenities than some of her more innocent sisters.ss Thus, Rosalind and Celia can cheerfully exchange the following without censure: ROSALIND I pr'ythee, take the cork out of thy mouth, that I may drink thy tidings. CELIA So you may put a man in your belly. (As You Like It, 111.2.204-205) And Beatrice can respond even to the prince in mixed company: DON PEDRO You have put him down, lady; you have put him down. BEA TRICE So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools. (Much Ado About Nothing, 11.1.277-279)

54 Terence Hawkes, Shakespeare and the Reason: A Study ofthe Tragedies and the Problem Plays (London: Routledge, 1964), p.79. 55 Donaldson, The Swan at the Well, p.76. 97

Their virgin status has remained unquestioned despite these exchanges. When Pitt writes, regarding Cressida, that" in Shakespeare's plays coarse speech is always a sign of moral laxity in a woman",56 she does not apply this rule in the other chapters of her book, when drawing conclusions about other female characters.

The tendency to see in Cressida what is held to be common knowledge, rather than what her lines prescribe, has the widest-reaching implications for those responsible for translating the character from page to stage. In his Playing Shakespeare TV series and book, John Barton unintentionally reveals something of his view of Cressida. In an episode not about characterisation at all, but rather about the best way to deliver a soliloquy, he has Jane Lapotaire read Cressida's first soliloquy. She reads this much: Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice He offers in another's enterprise; But more in Troilus thousandfold I see Than in the glass of Pander' s praise may be. Yet I hold off: women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing ... (1.2.273-278) Before giving her some notes about "sharing" with the audience, he says, "For the first line or two we got interested in Cressida's vanity and her self-absorption."57 When vain people look into a glass they see themselves, but when Cressida looks into the glass mentioned here, that of "Pander's praise", she sees only Troilus. There is no vanity or self-absorption in these lines, but Barton is so sure he knows what is there when Cressida speaks that he has stopped listening to her words. An unquestioned, traditional view of the character has usurped the text.

There does, in fact, seem to be a particular personality trait that recurs continually in Shakespeare's Cressida, if the full arc of her lines is examined, and it is not lustfulness, moral laxity, or even changeability, but fearfulness. The first clue that this is the wellspring of her immediately apparent wit is when Pandarus says he knows not "at what ward you lie". A "ward" is a defensive fencing position, and Cressida lists several of her own versions of these ("Upon my back to defend my belly, upon my wit to defend my wiles ... "), finishing by

56 Pitt, p.145. 57 John Barton, Playing Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1984 ), p. 95. 98 declaring that "at all these wards I lie, at a thousand watches" (I.2.251-255). Her first soliloquy makes it clear that what she fears is losing Troilus's love, and for this reason she is holding off. "Things won are done", "Men prize the thing ungained more than it is" and "Achievement is command; ungained, beseech" (I.2.278-284) are lines that indicate a fear of losing her value to Troilus. Juliet Stevenson is among the first actors to have explored this aspect of Cressida's personality. The speech in which she details the ''wards" at which she lies "at a thousand watches" became pivotal to her performance, delivered with great seriousness, emphasizing her caution in allowing Troilus power over her. 58

Another version of this caution was explored in the RSC's 1998 production, in which Michael Boyd, keen to anchor the Trojan War in a recognisable modem conflict, had the actors use Irish accents. This choice seems to have had a powerful influence on Jayne Ashboume's interpretation of Cressida, and she became a sensible, somewhat nagging, Irish lass. Her exchanges with Pandarus exploited all the defensiveness in the lines, but little of the fun. The problem became that this Cressida would probably not have slept with Troilus at all without any discussion ofmatrimony.59 In Cressida's first scene, Boyd replaced Alexander with Polyxena, who is a daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, and therefore Troilus's sister, and who is spoken of, but does not appear in Shakespeare's playtext.60 They were dressed alike in dark floral print dresses and sensible shoes, which was interesting, as this is probably the first production ever where it was not immediately apparent which of the women was Cressida. This decision, however, has implications for an important aspect of Cressida's position in the play. The drawback to Boyd's change is that Shakespeare's construction, that avoids having Cressida seen in context with any other woman, is gone. In his poem Chaucer describes Cressida as having many female companions. It need hardly be reiterated how prevalent are female friendships in Shakespeare's other plays. From Rosalind and Celia, Beatrice and Hero, Helena and her tribe of supportive co-conspirators in the comedies, to Cleopatra and her handmaidens, Desdemona and Emilia in the tragedies, Hermione and Paulina in the romances, a woman without female companionship is the exception in Shakespeare's writing. The absence of any other woman sharing the stage with Cressida,

58 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 59 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 60 Promptbook: Boyd production, 1998. Held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. Polyxena was not named in performance, but the promptbook notes the character thus. 99 therefore, seems almost certainly deliberate, and emphasizes her isolation and lack of a secure confidante.

Before Troilus and Cressida meet, Troilus is seen again, during the "Trojan Council" scene (Il.2), when the male members of the royal family are gathered to argue the perpetual question of whether Helen should be kept or returned. Troilus is most vocal in affirming the former course, but his motives and expressions reveal things about his character beyond the confines of the debate, that potentially colour his relationship with Cressida. First, there is his assessment of the nature of value. He parodies Marlowe's famous lines, "she is a pearl/ Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships / And turned crowned kings to merchants" (II.2.81-83), and counters Rector's assertion that she is "not worth what she does cost the holding" with "what's aught but as 'tis valued?" (Il.2.51,52). The reductive nature of this mercenary language is apparent: it is not Helen's face that has launched the ships, but her "price". It seems that one does not have to be a cynic, after all, to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. To Troilus value is a mutable thing that lies not in the object but in the observer. The potential for changeability in such a lover should be apparent. Secondly, his position within the political relationships of Troy shows him as having no hesitation in speaking against his elders and nominal superiors, and being heard, when he feels strongly about an issue that affects them all. Thirdly, there are his ideas on honour; significant, as he uses the word five times in this scene. His willingness to risk all for "a theme of honour and renown" (11.2.199) must later be re-examined in the light of his actions towards Cressida. He speaks hypothetically about honourable behaviour, were he to take a wife. He would stand firm by his choice because "we tum not back the silks upon the merchant / When we have soiled them" (11.2.69-70). This is important later, when it is Cressida instead of Helen to be sent to the Greeks, and we see how firmly he stands by his choice of Cressida. Honour is a word to be pulled out as an all-purpose, irrefutable excuse for doing whatever it is he wants to do at the time: keep Helen, seduce Cressida, hand over Cressida, go to battle, leave the battle, fight Diomedes. Note also that in Troilus's mind taking a woman to wife is equivalent to soiling silks.

Before pursuing Cressida's path further, it is necessary to diverge and look at one of the other female characters. Helen appears only once, in the play' s central scene (III. l ), and acts as pivot and metaphor for the surrounding action. The pretext for her appearance is a visit by 100

Pandarus to ask Paris to make an excuse for Troilus at dinner, so that he can keep a tryst with Cressida. This action is clearly not necessary for the furthering of the plot, so it must have a thematic point to make. Productions like Nunn's and Bogdanov's, in an attempt to clarify the story, presented Helen to the audience in the introduction. The problem with this is that it destroys the very careful build-up of anticipation whereby Helen is discussed from the prologue on, but this marvellous prize is only seen halfway through the story. Sam Mendes had a better sense of where she fits into the structure of the piece. His Helen was packaged like a giant, golden present that Paris unwrapped. Once the ritual was completed there was no way that Sally Dexter, as ravishing as she was, could live up to the carefully constructed idealization. As Rutter saw it, "It wasn't that she wasn't beautiful- simply that she wasn't enough."61 The sense of anticlimax when the audience finally sees Helen is inevitable. The hyperbole attached to discussion of her in the earlier scenes in the end fuels the knowledge in the observer that the war is not worth it.

After the interlude with Helen comes the first meeting between Troilus and Cressida. It is emphasized several times that we are seeing the tail end of what has been a long and frustrating courtship (she is "stubborn-chaste against all suit", she has loved silently "night and day/ For many weary months", they "with so many thousand sighs/ Did buy each other" (1.1.93, 111.2.110-111, IV.4.38-39)), so accusations ofhaste in her capitulation are unsupported by the text; she has been cautious all along. Even when they do have their love scene, the fearfulness that was apparent in her first scene has not diminished. Pandarus twice has to haul her back onstage as she tries to leave, and she memorably says that the "fountain" of their love has "more dregs than water, if my fears have eyes" (111.2.65), and that "Blind fear, that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason, stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worse" (111.2.68-70).

Some of her behaviour that could be regarded as fearfulness or caution, however, is ascribed different explanations by critics who see the acerbic side of her personality as brazen rather than defensive. Rollins, for example, states that, when Pandarus describes Cressida's excited shortness of breath, "it is to be feared that her agitation arose less from modesty and timidity than from a sense of elation at having at last caught a lover of exalted rank".62 Cressida

61 Rutter, Enter the Body, p.119. 62 Rollins, p.2. 101 makes no mention anywhere ofTroilus's rank making him attractive, even in her soliloquy. Indeed, no mention is made by anyone of a disparity in their social standing, and her uncle Pandarus is also referred to on the title page of the Quarto as "Prince of Licia". Rollins's point is pure conjecture. Rollins is a male critic, and a conservative one, but a feminist interest does not automatically confer sympathy for Cressida's motives. Immediately after quoting Cressida's line, "Then, though my heart's contents firm love doth bear,/ Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear" (I.2.285-286), Juliet Dusinberre says Cressida "counterfeits the confession of a lovesick girl, baffling Troilus who really feels this confusion",63 without noticing that Cressida said, not that she would counterfeit loving, but that she would counterfeit not loving. What is more, she is clearly doing a very bad job of it, if she appears to Troilus to be a lovesick girl, which demonstrates how genuinely lovesick she must be to abandon her declared strategy. Dusinberre takes the word of the earlier critics who believed in Cressida's duplicity, instead of testing whether the text stands up to other interpretations, that do not make such pejorative assumptions about her moral character.

During this scene, Troilus is so concerned with his own status as courtly lover that he forgets some of the classic elements of that role: humility, trust and deference to the loved one. This was Shakespeare's choice; Chaucer's Troilus overflows with all of these characteristics. This Troilus asks Pandarus to speed him to Cressida, where he can "wallow in the lily-beds / Proposed for the deserver" (III.2.11-12). All "wallowing" aside, a real courtly lover does not style himself as "the deserver"; he is supposed to see himself as undeserving. When eventually they meet, Cressida says frankly, "Prince Troilus, I have loved you night and day / For many weary months" (III.2.110-111 ). Troilus, by contrast, at no point tells Cressida that he loves her. This must surely be an omission worth remarking, and could not be accidental. His lines to her are all about himself and how true he is. Here, too, hints of an underlying misogyny are apparent when he says: 0, that I thought it could be in a woman - As, if it can, I will presume in you - To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love, To keep her constancy ... How were I then uplifted! But alas, I am as true as truth's simplicity,

63 Juliet Dusinberre, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women (London: Macmillan, 1975), p.64. 102

And simpler than the infancy of truth. (Ill.2.153-165) Even while they are still negotiating a union, before they have become lovers, he is already doubting her fidelity and singing the praises of the superiority of his own.

The morning after their "pretty encounter" (IIl.2.204), Troilus appears to behave just as Cressida predicted, leaving early as Cressida tries to make him stay. This is one of the trickiest scenes in the play, as the text is remarkably open, and readers seem to find evidence of virtually opposite situations, depending on their instinctive bias. All agree that this is not the harmonious conflict of the aubade in Romeo and Juliet, but for some, Troilus is sensible and solicitous of the whining and shrewish Cressida, while the same words to others show that Cressida was justified in fearing that Troilus would tire of her quickly, and prove that he is eager to be free of her at the earliest opportunity. The key to interpreting this scenario, of Cressida urging Troilus to stay, as he tries to send her back to bed and leave, may lie in comparing this scene with its equivalent in Chaucer. It is, in fact, a direct reversal. On Chaucer's morning after, Criseyde urges Troilus to leave so as not to risk her reputation, and he doesn't want to get out of bed, fearing that he could not last an hour away from her: And shal I rise, allas, and shal I so? ... For how sholde I my lif an houre save, Syn that with yow is al the lyfich have? (Book III, verse 211) 64

Also, within the confines of the play, Shakespeare has shown us Paris choosing not to arm because "my Nell would not have it so" (111.1.131 ), and he has shown Troilus himself choosing to leave the battlefield when a lovesick mood was upon him, but now outside matters are pressing and unavoidable. What is more, his failure to defend Cressida from Pandarus's jibes is inexcusably insensitive. The following exchange shows how much one night has altered his sense of respect for her:

CRESSIDA: Who's that at door? Good uncle, go and see. - My lord, come you again into my chamber. You smile and mock me, as if I meant naughtily.

TROILUS: Ha, ha!

CRESSIDA: Come, you are deceived. I think of no such thing. (IV .2.36-40)

64 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troi/us and Criseyde, ed. Nigel Coghill (London: Penguin, 1971), p.163. 103

When the news comes that Cressida is to be exchanged for Antenor, Troilus's response is "How my achievements mock me!" (IV.2.71). These are not words designed to give the impression of a man genuinely in love and grief stricken. Once again there is no mention of her, only of himself. Shakespeare highlights the sordidness of Troilus's acceptance with his line and Aeneas's answer: "Is it concluded so?" "By Priam and the general state of Troy" (IV .2.68-69). But we have seen Priam and the general state of Troy in decision-making action in Act II, and it involved Troilus confidently speaking out against his father and his brothers Hector and Helenus, and arguing the whole council down when it came to keeping Helen in Troy and not surrendering her to the Greeks. That he now accepts their conclusion without demur when it pertains to his own lady may make him a good soldier and politician, but a truly dismal lover. 65

Troilus' s obsession with himself at the expense of Cressida continues through these scenes to be unremitting. He does not stay to tell Cressida the news, but instead goes to meet his brother, leaving Pandarus the unpleasant task. Pandarus, who was always more than a little in love with Troilus, continues in his vein, showing no concern for what will happen to her, only for the effect on Troilus: "The young prince will go mad", "'Twill be his death, 'twill be his bane; he cannot bear it" (IV.2.77, 93-94). The irony of these lines is that Troilus shows no signs of either madness or illness at the prospect.

When Pandarus breaks the news to Cressida, she reacts vocally and decisively, declaring that she will not leave Troy. Poonam Trivedi, who has undertaken an extensive comparison of the different versions of the story, has found that "Shakespeare's Cressida is the only one in the tradition who protests or so clearly refuses to go. Other Cressidas grieve, swoon debate, but never do they say they will not go."66 Faced with the prospect of being traded goods, this Cressida is painfully aware of what it is that makes her valuable to people. When she is protesting at being sent to the Greeks, she says that she will Tear my bright hair and scratch my praised cheeks, Crack my clear voice with sobs, and break my heart With sounding 'Troilus'. I will not go from Troy. (IV.2.108-110)

65 Howard Adams amusingly paraphrases the old proverb, on behalf ofTroilus: "I cannot love thee dear that much, since I love honour more". "What Cressid Is", in Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, eds. Carole Levin and Karen Robertson (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1991), 75-93, p.83. 66 Trivedi, p.340. 104

Though this could be used as the only piece of actual textual evidence of her assumed vanity, it is more poignant to acknowledge this as the ultimate desperate action of a woman who understands that her value to others is based on her attractiveness. She is prepared to render herself valueless in order to avoid being treated as a commodity.

These lines of Cressida's conclude IV.2, and she leaves the audience with the impact of those six decisive, one-syllable words. There follows a brief scene, of only twelve lines, in which Troilus meets Paris, and the others, who have come to take Cressida away. When Troilus speaks to Paris about the trade he says, I'll bring her to the Grecian presently; And to his hand when I deliver her, Think it an altar and thy brother Troilus A priest, there off ring to it his own heart. (IV.3.6-9) It is actually Cressida who is being offered up here, but Troilus is only concerned with his own sacrifice. The desire of critics to sympathize with Troilus at this point prompts them to miss the irony in his position. 67 They have "systematically mistaken the self-righteousness of Troilus for real virtue".68

The scene then immediately switches back to Pandarus and Cressida. The insertion of such a short passage between two scenes depicting the same people in the same place may seem puzzling. Many productions (Shaw, 1954; Barton, 1968; Barton, 1976; Davies, 1985; Mendes, 1990) have simply cut IV.3, or moved it to halfway through IV.2, before Cressida's entrance, and run the two together.69 Disruption of Shakespeare's structure, though, involves losing things that, though subtle, may be important. In IV .2 Cressida finished the scene declaring, "I will not go from Troy''. As scene 4 begins, she is saying, "My love admits no qualifying dross;/ No more my grief, in such a precious loss" (IV.4.9-10). Defiance has become grief. She seems to have resigned herself to going. Carol Rutter also pinpointed in this structure a very noticeable matter, that will affect the way an audience (literally) sees Cressida in subsequent scenes: a costume change. In scene 2 Cressida has risen from the bed she shared with Troilus. In scene 4, she exchanges tokens with Troilus, giving him her glove.

67 "If the play is to arouse compassion ... that compassion can only be focussed on Troilus." Richard David, "Stratford 1954", p.390. 68 Rene Girard, A Theatre ofEnvy ( Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991 ), p.139. 69 Prompbooks held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 105

Gloves are not worn to bed, but are worn to go out. 70 "Shakespeare writes Cressida's costume change unsentimentally but also impartially, declining to 'make' Cressida anything except a woman with her gloves on dressed for travelling."71 As previously mentioned, many productions cut scene 3 entirely, so it must then be decided what to do with a Cressida who is still dressed in whatever she woke up in.

Francesca Annis in 1976 and Carole Royle in 1981 both left Troy in their clothes from Act I (they rose from their beds fully clothed), but arrived in the Greek camp transformed, Annis into "a Greek courtesan" and Royle into "figure-hugging silk".72 Where and when they had found the opportunity to do this ("A Hostage Outfitter's, perhaps, in no-man's-land?"73) remained a mystery, but what was not in doubt was what the change told the audience about Cressida's story. She becomes a whore before a word is said by her or to her, and without her needing to perform any action.

Juliet Stevenson stayed in her long, white nightdress, with only the addition ofTroilus's greatcoat. This production was set specifically and exclusively during the Crimean War, and dressed in historically accurate period costume. When it came time for Cressida to be transferred, however, instead of dressing Cressida in appropriate travelling clothes for a Victorian lady, "Davies's production violated its own rules of stylistic engagement to opt for heightened sensation and anachronism". The nightdress was "an impropriety as great, given this production's vocabulary of costume, as setting Florence Nightingale naked in the officers' mess at Sebastapol".74 Boyd's production, in 1998, was the first of the RSC's to have Cressida change from her nightwear (a sensible white cotton nightie) into her day dress (she wore the same one for all but the "morning after" scene) during the scene that Rutter pinpointed as most likely to involve the scripted costume change.

Bogdanov's production took the probably unique step of changing her costume on stage. Cressida remained in the see-through neglige that she had worn to meet Troilus the previous

70 The time made available by IV.3 may appear shorter than necessary for a costume change, but Cressida would not need as much time as is necessary for a change out of one costume into another; she just has to put her dress on over her shift. 71 Rutter, Enter the Body, p.126. 72 Michael Billington, Guardian, 19 August 1976; 8 July 1981. 73 Rutter, Enter the Body, p.129. 74 Rutter, Enter the Body, pp.130, 115. 106 night all the way up to, and including, the entrance of the delegation, come to take her away. On his line "Pleads your fair usage" (IV .4.118), Diomedes took it off, leaving her completely naked except for Troilus' s scarf, then the attending Aeneas handed her a large fur coat and a pair of high-heeled shoes, which was her costume for the rest of the play (fig. 19). Given that the audience had probably seen enough bare flesh (male and female) by this point in the production for it to have lost its titillation value, Cressida's nakedness may well have provided a good physicalization of her vulnerable situation, were it not that something about it did not look credible. This may have been an issue of design, and the decision to use modem clothes. In societies where clothes of this style are worn, public nudity is not normally treated in such a perfunctory way. I know of no context where it is treated with this odd mixture of casualness and threat, except possibly in pornographic movies. The result was that the world created for the play sacrificed its sense ofreality, and Cressida's body as sexualized object, rather than self-owned subject, was reconfirmed once more.

The occasion on which Troilus comes closest to telling Cressida he loves her occurs when he confirms that she will be sent to the Greeks with the line, "Cressid, I love thee in so strained a purity I That the blest gods ... take thee from me" (IV.4.23-26). Once again the emphasis is all on the admirable quality of his love and the fact that he is going to have something taken away from him. As the painful farewells are said, Cressida is aware of the implications for Troilus ("O, you shall be exposed, my lord, to dangers I As infinite as imminent" (IV.4.67- 68)), but he makes no mention whatever of the effect that leaving home for the enemy's camp will have on her, except to worry that she will be tempted by the Grecians to be untrue to him.

Shakespeare makes a very significant change from one of his major sources here. Chaucer's Troilus suggests to Criseyde that they run away together, and she refuses. Shakespeare's Troilus, unlike his Lysander, his Florizel or his Romeo, makes no such offer. Instead, Cressida asks him four times whether she really has to go, and he tells her each time that she must. If someone asks the same question four times, it is a reasonable supposition that they are hoping for a different answer. This Troilus will only go so far as to promise her "nightly visitation" on condition that she "be true" (IV.4.72-73). Howard Adams has observed a device of "delayed repetition" used by Shakespeare "to show that something of central importance is going on in a play".75 He cites several instances (Albany on hearing that

75 Adams, p.86. 107

Gloucester's eyes have been put out, Macduff on being told his wife and children have been murdered, Cleopatra on being told that Antony has married Octavia, Emilia on hearing of Iago's villainy) where characters have asked the same question repeatedly. Adams says, "Surely, then, when Shakespeare uses this same technique in portraying the light that Cressida finally sees in the mirror of Troilus's remarks, he is letting us know that something of central import is happening in the fashioning of Cressida's self image."76 Adams is concerned primarily with Cressida as a mutable personality who changes according to the reflection of herself she sees in others, but the technique he identifies seems to have a more specific application. It occurs when bad news is being delivered, but more particularly, when the questioner has to make a drastic reassessment of what someone they know is capable of. Each of these instances involves a situation where someone finds out that they were wrong about someone else. It seems most likely, therefore, that the audience is here being shown Cressida finding out that she was wrong about Troilus. Of all the news-bearers in these examples, Troilus is the only one who could conceivably change his response. When, in response to one of his many exhortations to be true, she replies, "O heavens, you love me not!" (IV.4.81), it is usually played on stage as an exclamation or rebuke. It would be interesting to see the effect on later scenes of playing this line as a realization. This was the approach taken in Joseph Papp's 1965 production (which may be the first ever to have presented a sympathetic Cressida and a Troilus who was less so). Papp wrote of this scene, "Troilus's support is vital to her, but his words are devoid of hope; they tum Cressida to stone right before our eyes."77

Even (or especially) when the time comes to hand her over, Troilus shows painfully little regard for Cressida as a person, rather than a possession. As she stands silently by, Troilus and Diomedes have an altercation, not so much about how she should be treated, but over the reasons for treating her well: TROILUS: Entreat her fair and, by my soul, fair Greek, If e'er thou stand at mercy ofmy sword, Name Cressid, and thy life shall be as safe As Priam is in Ilium. DI0MEDES: Fair lady Cressid,

76 Adams, pp.86-87. 77 Papp, p.58. 108

So please you, save the thanks this prince expects. The lustre in your eye, heaven in your cheek, Pleads your fair usage; and to Diomed You shall be mistress and command him wholly.

TROILUS: Grecian, thou dost not use me courteously, To shame the zeal ofmy petition to thee In praising her. (IV.4.112-122) Troilus instructs Diomedes to treat Cressida well. Diomedes affirms that he fully intends to do just that, but has the temerity to address his remarks to the lady herself, instead of talking across the top of her. Troilus's umbrage at this derives from his sense that Diomedes is not using him well.

Diomedes, from Cressida's perspective, provides a contrast to Troilus by publicly addressing himself to her instead of about her. When she arrives at the Greek camp, maintaining her silence, Shakespeare sets up an uncomfortable parallel in Ulysses's phrasing of his suggestion about kissing her: "'Twere better she were kissed in general" (IV.5.22). He, too, is going to discuss her publicly with other men without including her in the conversation. After the confronting round of kissing, it is Diomedes who steps in, once again addressing her directly ("Lady, a word" (IV.5.54)), and gets her out of the situation. So Diomedes has publicly taken steps to help her in a way that Troilus has conspicuously failed to do. It seems that Troilus is indeed one of those "that have the voice oflions and the act of hares" (111.2.85), whom Cressida so feared.

If any further evidence is needed to confirm that Troilus is being satirized rather than idealized, the last encounter between him and Diomedes shows Troilus furiously pursuing Diomedes, not out of any interest in the woman that he loved "with so eternal and so fixed a soul" (V.2.172-173), but out of a rather more mundane grievance: "O traitor Diomed! Turn thy false face, thou traitor,/ And pay the life thou owest me for my horse!" (V.6.7-8).78 Given the explicit nature of Shakespeare's subversions of his character, what is most remarkable is that Troilus maintained his reputation as a romantic hero for so long.

78 Trevor Nunn changed Troilus's line to "pay the life thou owest me for my whore", finding a new way to change a moment that potentially makes Troilus look ridiculous, into one more that is critical of Cressida, and making a significant change to Troilus's treatment of her. Promptbook held by the Royal National Theatre, London. 109

Rene Girard sees a deliberate plan in this subversion. He believes that the comedy was written in such a way as to invite two radically divergent interpretations of the same text ... He had to handle the theme in a manner conventional enough to remain acceptable to the populace, and yet audacious, impertinent and witty enough to please his small but all-important circle of sophisticated friends. 79 Shakespeare does this through "scrupulous respect for the literal data of the old story", but inverts the spirit of the tale in a way that will be apparent only to those paying careful attention to the nuances of the lovers' relationship. That it is really Troilus who betrays Cressida was designed to be inferred by those alert to an expected sophisticated subversion: "The physical infidelity of Cressida has turned into a kind of retaliation against the spiritual infidelity ofTroilus, which must be viewed as the greater of the two sins because it occurs first and is totally unprovoked."80 Girard saw the pivot for Troilus, between his waning initial passion and his all-consuming, jealousy-fuelled second passion, as being Cressida's line, "A woeful Cressid 'mongst the merry Greeks!" (IV.4.55), believing that it is this introduction of the idea of rival men that spurs him. Ralph Fiennes's Troilus in Sam Mendes's 1990 production appeared to use this idea. On his line "No remedy'', his Troilus walked away from Cressida to stand upstage with his back to her, only to leap attentively back to her side once he heard her line.

The difficulty for the actor playing Troilus is that an attempt to convey on stage the less noble aspects of his character runs the risk of being interpreted as a bad performance, with critics operating on the assumption that the nominal protagonist should be an appealing creature. Joseph Fiennes fell foul of this problem when he played the role in 1996, getting generally bad reviews. Robert Smallwood, for example, noticed that Joseph Fiennes tempered Troilus's idealism with a broad streak of self-pity, the tremulous quality of his voice, though touching (in moderation) at moments of high emotion, was overused and over-indulged, so that he gave the impression of being constantly on the verge of bursting into tears at the exquisite beauty and pain of his own feelings. 81

79 Girard, p.136. 80 Girard, p.138. 81 Robert Smallwood, "Shakespeare Performances in England", Shakespeare Survey, 50 (1997), 201-224, p.214. 110

Smallwood appears to mean this as a criticism, rather than an observation of an astute reading of the role. Russell Jackson did touch on the idea that this impression might have been a deliberate choice: "Troilus (Joseph Fiennes) was sometimes inarticulately lachrymose, a tiresome vocal effect that (perhaps appropriately) made it difficult to idealize him as a lover."82

Perhaps a more legible representation of this idea was achieved in 1998, with a relationship that emphasized the continuing misunderstanding between the lovers. Troilus's betrayal of Cressida was cleverly signified with the use of props. As she came on prepared to leave Troy, Cressida threw her suitcase to the ground in defiance, scattering her packed clothes. Troilus automatically began gathering them together and packing them up again, ready to send her away, exhorting her all the time to be true, "But he, already, was 'false' - the suitcase had betrayed him. "83

As she enters the next scene, Cressida initially maintains her silence. The setting has moved directly from Troy to the Greek camp, where the generals wait for the arrival of Hector for the duel with Ajax. Instead, Cressida appears first, and Diomedes presents her to the Greeks. In many of the RSC's productions (Barton, 1976; Hands, 1981; Mendes, 1990; Judge, 1996) he has removed her cloak or other wrap, as if unwrapping a present or offering for them. 84 The scene that follows must be among the most revealing of the influence of sexual politics on performance of any in the history of Western theatre. Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek forces, greets Cressida and kisses her. Ulysses then suggests of the general's action, "Yet is the kindness but particular;/ 'Twere better she were kissed in general" (IV.5.21-22). This they proceed to do, with Nestor, Achilles and Patroclus (twice) adding their kisses to Agamemnon's. Meanwhile, Cressida says not a word, nor is given any explicit stage direction, in a crucial openness similar to Isabella's last moments in Measure for Measure. Both are instances where the reaction of a character can completely change the nature of the story being told, but the actors' decision on what that reaction should be cannot be based on any unambiguous textual instruction. Cressida then speaks up to deflect kisses from Menelaus and Ulysses. When Diomedes steps in to escort her out of the scene, Nestor makes an observation:

82 Russell Jackson, "Shakespeare in Production", Shakespeare Quarterly, 48 (1997), 208-215, p.212. 83 Rutter, Enter the Body, p.115. 84 Promptbooks held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 111

DI0MEDES: Lady, a word. I'll bring you to your father. NESTOR: A woman of quick sense. Ulysses gives in reply his famous description of Cressida, spitting out the nastiest things he can think of saying about a woman: ULYSSES: Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body. 0, these encounterers, so glib of tongue That give accosting welcome ere it comes, And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every tickling reader! Set them down For sluttish spoils of opportunity And daughters of the game. (IV.5.54-64)

In looking at Ulysses's opinion ofTroilus, Robert Kimbrough writes, "Debate over Troilus's character cannot centre on it but must consider the evidence found in the entire play", 85 though barely a page earlier he has quoted Ulysses's speech about Cressida with such acceptance that he calls it a "stage direction". It must, however, be lifted completely out of context to appear so. After being kissed by Agamemnon, Nestor, Achilles and Patroclus without speaking at all, Cressida avoids kissing Menelaus. The exchange between them runs as follows: MENELAUS: I'll have my kiss, sir. - Lady, by your leave. CRESSIDA: In kissing, do you render or receive? MENELAUS: Both take and give. CRESSIDA: I'll make my match to live, The kiss you take is better than you give; Therefore no kiss. (IV.5.36-40) The next to try for a kiss is Ulysses, whose suggestion this "game" was: ULYSSES: May I, sweet lady, beg a kiss of you? CRESSIDA: You may.

85 Robert Kimbrough, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and its Setting (Cambridge Ms: Harvard UP, 1964 ), pp.80-81. 112

ULYSSES: I do desire it. CRESSIDA: Why, beg then. ULYSSES: Why then, for Venus' sake, give me a kiss, When Helen is a maid again, and his -

CRESSIDA: I am your debtor; claim it when 'tis due.

ULYSSES: Never's my day, and then a kiss of you. (IV.5.48-53)86 When the context is restored, this "stage direction" is revealed as something else entirely. Ulysses, who has so far been the clever one dazzling the other Greeks with his words, is trumped by a girl. He suggests they all kiss her, watches several of his companions do so, publicly declares that he desires to kiss her too, but due to his own choice of phrase is defeated. He obtains permission only to beg. Cressida has just publicly put him "for the only time in this play- on the losing side oflanguage". 87 His remaining two lines are about saving face, and do not match the standard of wit he has set himself, as Donaldson found: "Wit that should be crisp and salty is instead soggy and merely bitter."88

Looking at his speech in greater detail, he begins by suggesting that it is not necessary to listen to what she says, because it is obvious from looking at her what kind of woman she is. (Numerous critics have echoed him on this point.) He then suggests that she shares her thoughts indiscriminately. Yet her longest speech amounts to no more than three lines, and she speaks only seventy-two words in total, in this scene. He therefore has no legitimate basis for claiming she is "glib of tongue". As for the "accosting welcome" she allegedly gives, Jane Adamson asks, "When was a welcome so like a spit in the eye?"89 This reading of Ulysses's speech was adopted by Donaldson in 1985 and Adamson in 1987, but not earlier, and it was first noticed by reviewers watching Davies's 1985 production, where Ulysses's lines to Juliet Stevenson's Cressida became "the violent reaction of a man humiliated".90 Cressida's line to Ulysses, "Why, beg then", appears as such in both the Quarto and Folio texts. Samuel Johnson pointed out that most (though not all) ofthis scene is in rhymed couplets and, as "then" breaks the rhyming pattern, he proposed "Why, beg two" or "Why,

86 The 1998 Arden edition gives line 50 as "Why, beg too". I have amended to follow the original in the Folio and Quarto, for reasons given below. 87 Carol Rutter, "Shakespeare, His Designers and the Politics of Costume: Handing Over Cressida's Glove", Essays in Theatre I Etudes theatra/es, 12 (1994), 107-128, p.119. 88 Donaldson, "Cressid False", p.80. 89 Jane Adamson, Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida (London: Harvester Press, 1987), p.122. 90 Michael Billington, Guardian, 27 June 1985. 113 beg too" instead. These emendations are still being used in some instances (see footnote 86, for example), despite there being no evidence that this is what Shakespeare intended for the line beyond the fact that the previous line ends with "you". The second Arden edition even went so far as to favour "two", because "Johnson's conjecture suits both Cressida's flippancy and her oncoming disposition ... Cressida offers the suggestion of two kisses (which fits desire), corrects Ulysses, and proffers herself as willing".91 The editor finds a way to present his own interpretative decision about a character's personality and attitude to the actions of the scene as a textual matter, giving it a spurious authority.

It was standard practice for critics from earliest times up to the mid-l 960s to read Cressida as responsible for the actions of the men in this scene, despite the absence of any textual evidence indicative of her reaction. Agnes Mure Mackenzie's 1924 interpretation is typical: Agamemnon greets her with a kiss - then, certainly a more matter-of-course salutation than now- but her reaction to it makes that shrewd judge of humankind, Ulysses, remark sardonically, Yet is the kindness but particular: 'Twere better she were kissed in general.92 Coming directly from the "she must have asked for it" school of thought, this reading assumes that Ulysses is not responsible for his behaviour towards Cressida, but that there must have been something about her that "made" him suggest that they all kiss her. These sexist assumptions originate not in Shakespeare's script, but in the interpretation of later writers. In an inversion similar to that in Measure for Measure, where critics have described how "Isabella begs Claudio to save her chastity", the writers who speak of the scene where "Cressida kisses the Greek generals"93 are legion. In the text, it is they who kiss her, and the two are by no means interchangeable.94

Angela Pitt, in another deduction that reverses the situation indicated by the text, writes that "her coy teasing of Patroclus is clear evidence that she has no sense of inhibition or shame:

91 Kenneth Palmer (ed.), note to IV.5.49, in the Arden 2nd edition {London: Methuen, 1982). 92 Agnes Mure Mackenzie, The Women in Shakespeare's Plays {London: William Heinemann, 1924), p.196. 93 These include: O.J. Campbell, W.W. Lawrence, A.P. Rossiter, R. Kimbrough, A.N. Okerlund, C. Asp, A. Pitt, among many others. 94 There are no stage directions on this point in either the Folio or the Quarto, but lines like "Our general doth salute you with a kiss" (IV.5.20), '"Twere better she were kissed in general" (22), "I'll begin" (23), "Achilles bids you welcome" (26), and "Patroclus kisses you" (34), clearly indicate who is giving and who receiving. 114

The kiss you take is better than you give; Therefore no kiss!" 95 Leaving aside her factual error (the above line is addressed to Menelaus, not Patroclus), if you wish to argue that a woman is naturally given to promiscuity, quoting her flat refusal to kiss a man is a strange way to go about it. This attitude has translated to both performance and performance analysis. In discussing Barton's 1968 production, Greenwald writes, "There were, on the other hand, voices of reason in either camp ... When Cressida passed among the sportive generals, Ulysses refused to kiss her, which retained his moral integrity."96 Ulysses's moral integrity is not damaged by being the instigator of all the generals kissing Cressida, but it is enhanced by his not being a participant. Vivian Thomas is only one of several who observe admiringly that "only Ulysses scorns to kiss Cressida",97 neglecting the fact that it was Ulysses himself who suggested that she be "kissed in general". To add injury to insult, he gives the whole Greek army permission to treat Cressida with contempt, based on the assumption that they are able to see that she is that sort of woman. According to Thomas, Diomedes "quickly gains a true estimation of Cressida", Agamemnon "does not need spectacles to see into Cressida", Ulysses "assesses and classifies Cressida", and to Nestor "her true nature is so apparent that she transforms the naturally verbose Nestor to being pithy".98 Note that Thomas bases his assessment of Cressida on that of the male characters in the play, rather than on any actions or words of Cressida herself. His only reference to Cressida's words or actions is this: Agamemnon ... begins the round of kissing which Cressida accepts without demur (indeed she is so much at her ease that she is able to exercise her undoubted wit at the expense ofMenelaus- a dog whom almost everyone sees fit to kick).99 So when Cressida says nothing, her silence is taken to be consent, but when she speaks and refuses to be kissed it is not treated as evidence in her favour, but as yet more against her. And the fact that she also fends off Ulysses is completely ignored. Once again the critics are forced into deductive contortions to get the reading they want from the scene. The work of Pitt, Greenwald and Thomas appeared during the course of the 1980s, demonstrating that

95 Pitt, p.145. 96 Greenwald, p.67. 97 Thomas, p.110. 98 Thomas, pp.109-110. 99 Ibid. 115 there was no single point when critical discussion of Cressida changed from a dismissive to a deeper analysis, though Thomas is probably the last to use such strong terms.

Tillyard's similar assertion that Ulysses "sees through her instantly'' is particularly alarming. 100 When perusing the literature on the subject of Shakespeare's Cressida, it is hard not to be struck by the myriad variations on this particular line, in response to both the text and to performances: Boas, 1896: "she at once shows herself in her true colours." Lawrence, 1931: "the scorching comments of the clear-sighted Ulysses" Marsh, 1965: "the Greeks seem to recognize her for what she is without difficulty." Darlington, 1968: "she at once gave herself away to the wise Ulysses." Rollins, 1972: "Ulysses reads her at a glance." Wardle, 1976: "an assured sexual specialist whom Ulysses instantly recognizes" Pitt, 1981: "Recognition of her true nature is given to Ulysses." Brooks, 1987: "Diomed recognizes her real nature." Thomas, 1987: "Diomedes has 'found' Cressida at first glance."101 These comments all have in common the references to sight, to immediacy and to truth, suggesting that it is possible to know that she is sexually available by looking at her. Ulysses is illustrating the Renaissance belief that appearance is an accurate guide to virtue, 102 but there should be no obligation to assume that he is right, as Shakespeare frequently has characters make such assertions when they are unreliable. 103 At work here are two disturbing premises. The first is that a woman can be marked as a ''wanton", or ''whore", or any of the many other synonyms used, according to her inherent nature, regardless of her actions (at this point in the play Cressida has had no liaisons besides her one with the hero, to whom she has sworn her exclusive love. Critics who call Ulysses's description the "truth" about her are, therefore, basing their support on actions she has not as yet performed). The second assumption is that,

100 E.M.W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London: Chatto & Windus, 1951), p.75. 101 Boas, p.376; Lawrence, p.132; Derick R.C. Marsh, "Interpretation and Misinterpretation: The Problem of Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Studies, 1 (1965), 182-198, p.190; W.A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 1968; Rollins, p.1; Irving Wardle, Times, 19 August 1976; Pitt, p.146; Harold Brooks, "Troilus and Cressida: Its Dramatic Unity and Genre", in "Fanned and Winnowed Opinions": Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins, ed. John W. Mahon and Thomas A. Pendleton (London: Methuen, 1987), 6-25, ~.13; Thomas, p.109. 02 Compare Lucio's salutation to Isabella: "Hail virgin, if you be - as those cheek-roses/ Proclaim you are no less." (Measure for Measure, 1.4.16-17) 103 For example, Leontes reads Hennione 's body language to be proof of an affair with Polixenes, and Hamlet accuses the uptight Ophelia of "ambling". 116 if a woman has been labelled this way, it is permissible for any man to treat her in any way he likes, including as sexual common property. These were at one time, of course, widely held beliefs, and created an impossible situation for women, because the labelling is based on the opinion of the man, not the actions of the woman, and is therefore entirely out of her control. 104

The dynamics of such a scene are likely to be echoed in the dynamics of a rehearsal room dominated by men. When Papp wrote of his rehearsal process, he reported that the actor playing Pandarus argued that Cressida was undoubtedly a light and loose woman who had experienced previous sexual relations with men ... The principal male actors of the company shared Thersites' view of Cressida. In particular, the actor playing Troilus raised the question in this way: 'Why did she give Diomedes the sleeve if she was not a faithless slut?' 105 Papp was a director with a clearly stated sympathetic perspective on Cressida, but in the many productions where the director has brought to the rehearsals a view similar to that of the abovementioned actors, it would take a very strong-willed and confident actress indeed to challenge the consensus on how Cressida should be portrayed.

In performance these beliefs turn into self-fulfilling prophecies, as Cressida simply performs Ulysses's description of her. Every Stratford production from 1954 to 1981 created a Cressida who was seductively dressed and sexually voracious and indiscriminate from the beginning of the play. More specifically, as reported by the reviewers, each of these productions showed Cressida in her entrance to the Greek camp enjoying the kissing of the generals: in 1954, "Muriel Pavlow, dainty and capricious, modelled her first appearance on Ulysses's description, and made little attempt to go beyond this brief'.106 In 1960, "the scene determines whether Cressida's action to take Diomedes is a weakness of character or a necessary choice to ensure survival. Dorothy Tutin settled with the former, both inspiring and reacting favourably to the male laughter."107 In 1968, "Helen Mirren visibly grew in

104 An interesting comparison can be made here with Nick Enright's play A Property ofthe Clan (Sydney: Currency Press, 1994). The play is based on events that took place in Newcastle, Australia, in 1990. The title describes the attitude of a group of young men to a girl who was gang raped and murdered. 105 Papp, pp.27, 71. 106 David, "Stratford 1954", p.390. 107 James Shaw, "Troi/us and Cressida", in Shakespeare in Performance, ed. Keith Parsons and Pamela Mason (London: Salamander, 1995), p.224. 117 confidence as kisses on the hand developed to the lips, delighted with the apparent power she had over the legendary warriors". 108 In 1976, "her behaviour here can instantly settle the question of whether Ulysses is right in setting her down as a born wanton and 'daughter of the game'. Here again Miss Annis subtly kept the options open. Could it not have been the glory of the occasion and the flattery of so many princes that excited the girl to these freedoms?"109 In 1981, Carol Royle "loves it when, upon arrival at the Greek front line, she is immediately the centre of attention of a group of war-weary men without women". 110

Despite the broad uniformity of these readings, an examination of the full arc of Cressida's role throughout the play suggests a more likely response to the generals' advances than delight. Cressida begins as a talker, and as one of Shakespeare's "witty wenches", but is silent from the moment when she asks Troilus whether he will be true, just before Diomedes's entrance, to her line to Menelaus. 111 Her witty quips falter when she begins to confess her love to Troilus, and cease completely when she is told she will leave Troy. The stages of her character development may be seen to describe a cycle, from defensive wit to confusion, to confession, to distress, to silence, and back to defensive wit. Cressida's characteristic fearfulness and use of her sharp wit as a means of protection mark her as a survivor, and are particularly evident in the scene discussed above. This tends to be the interpretation favoured by critics, such as Stephen Lynch, who take a psychological approach to character analysis: "The Greeks aggressively make sport of her, so she defensively makes fools ofthem."112

The emphasis on caution in her lines throughout the play so far makes it reasonable to assume that Cressida's silence at the beginning of this scene bespeaks wariness, but evidence in the text must still be tabled to demonstrate that it is not a modem assumption that she is in a dangerous situation, and under some kind of sexual threat as she enters enemy territory. Though women have doubtless been raped by enemy soldiers ever since humans fought their first war, within the artificial world of literature a writer may choose not to include that aspect of warfare. Caxton and Cressida's inventor, Benoit de Sainte-Maure, both describe her as being respectfully welcomed by the Greeks. Sainte-Maure's Grecians give her jewels, and

108 Ibid. 109 David, Shakespeare in the Theatre, p.125. 110 Robert Cushman, Observer, 12 July 1981. 111 From IV.4.100 (IV.4 is 147 lines long) to IV.5.37. 112 Stephen J. Lynch, "Shakespeare's Cressida: A Woman of Quick Sense", Philological Quarterly, 63 (1984), 357-367, p.363. 118

Caxton's promise to treat her like a daughter. Shakespeare, however, has certainly created a world of a different nature, and its comparative brutality and ugliness can been seen in many scenes of both the love and war plots. This is the scene where, for Campbell, Cressida "kisses all the men, with an abandon much greater than the liberal customs of Elizabethan salutation prescribed". 113 Leaving aside that, in fact, they kiss her, Arlene Okerlund quotes Erasmus, an approximate contemporary of Shakespeare, who describes these "liberal customs": There is a fashion which cannot be commended enough. Wherever you go, you are received on all hands with kisses; when you take leave, you are dismissed with kisses. If you go back, your salutes are returned to you. When a visit is paid, the first act of hospitality is a kiss, and when guests depart, the same entertainment is repeated; wherever a meeting takes place there is kissing in abundance; in fact whatever way you tum, you are never without it. Oh Faustus, if you had once tasted how sweet and fragrant those kisses are, you would indeed wish to be a traveller, not for ten years, like Solon, but for your whole life, in England. 114 If, then, the kissing in this scene should not automatically be viewed as an indictment of either Cressida's lechery or the Greeks', what evidence is there to suggest that anything other than this kind of greeting is occurring?

Perhaps the first clue, for both the reader and the Cressida of the play, that she is not safe in this new place is Ulysses's already quoted line, "Yet is the kindness but particular;/ 'Twere better she were kissed in general." Ulysses's choice not to address himself to her at this stage, but rather to speak about her to the other men, and suggest to them that they do something to her, rather than seeking her participation or approval, must surely signal danger to someone as cautious as Cressida. The fuss that each of the generals makes about their individual efforts, along with their competitiveness, definitely sexualizes the encounter beyond the merely civil ("So much for Nestor", "I'll take that winter from your lips, fair lady./ Achilles bids you welcome", "For thus popped Paris in his hardiment, I And parted thus you and your argument", "I'll have my kiss, sir." (IV.5.24, 25-26, 29-30, 36)), as does the absence of any other women on stage to make Cressida look less isolated. Shakespeare took great pains to establish the defensive nature of Cressida's wit in her first exchange with Pandarus. She

113 Campbell, p.215. 114 Desiderius Erasmus, quoted in Arlene N. Okerlund, "In Defence ofCressida: Character as Metaphor", Women's Studies, 7 (1980), 1-17, p.9. 119 ceased this kind of banter entirely during her pledges to Troilus, and then lapsed into silence. The sudden re-emergence of her witty self here, therefore, demonstrates instantly and effectively that she is feeling the need to defend herself.

When Libby Appel, in 1984, presented the generals' behaviour as an unwelcome and violent act rather than a solicited one, it was confronting to the conventional way of playing this scene. 115 This prompted Geoffrey Aggeler, reviewing for Shakespeare Quarterly, to assess it thus: She [Appel] also took some rather questionable liberties with the text to convey an impression of Cressida as a hapless victim in the scene in which she enters the Greek camp (IV.v). Disregarding Ulysses's description of Cressida's insinuating manner ("There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, ... "), Appel made the scene into something resembling a gang rape, with the girl being literally thrown from one Greek hero to another. That Shakespeare may have intended the scene to convey a very different impression of Cressida is suggested not only by Ulysses' s scornful assessment of her but by the line that follows it as a kind of summation: responding to the sound of a trumpet, all of the Greeks cry out together "The Trojans' trumpet," which can only come out as "The Trojan strumpet!" Appel gave this line to the ever present Cassandra in her role as Chorus [Cassandra watched the whole play from a platform above the main stage] in an apparent attempt to avoid its cruelly comic effects. 116 It is apparent that the only liberty taken here was the reassigning of one line; the rest was not about "textual surgery", as the reviewer called it, but interpretation. Aggeler makes the assumption that Shakespeare intended Ulysses to be a reliable authority on this point, and that the pun on "strumpet" was meant to give the audience information on Cressida, not on the men present. In watching a scene with a group of men and one woman on stage, Aggeler identifies with the men, seeing the scene through their eyes, and assuming that this perspective is the "true" one, and that a woman's perspective on the same actions is a "false" one. Presenting Shakespeare's lines as a critique of male, rather than female, behaviour is taking "questionable liberties with the text".

115 I have found only two examples of women directing Troilus and Cressida (both in the USA). Libby Appel (for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1984) is the first; the second is Barbara Gaines, who directed it for the Shakespeare Repertory in Chicago in 1987 and 1994 (the latter production was reviewed in Shakespeare Bulletin (Sfring 1995), 13-14). 11 Geoffrey Aggeler, "Utah Shakespearean Festival", Shakespeare Quarterly, 36 ( 1984 ), 230-231, p.231. 120

When the BBC produced its series of televised Shakespeare, Jonathan Miller directed the Troilus and Cressida. In Susan Willis's commentary on the filming process, it is interesting to note what she regards as "one of the significant interpretative changes between rehearsal and studio". In rehearsal, Cressida's entrance to the Greek camp with Diomedes was a flirtatious dialogue, a half embrace with her laughing into his shoulder as they moved between the tents. In the studio, however, the two had to pass through a crowd of leering, taunting, grabbing soldiers - no laughing matter ... In fact, that entire section of the scene altered; meeting the officers became much less her teasing them than their responding to her with only slightly more courtly physicality than had the soldiers. That development gave an edge of veiled nastiness to the whole scene. 117 If, then, the techniques of realism most familiar to television are employed in a scene usually played for stylisation and ritual, the implications for a woman in such a situation become clearer.

Although the effect of this scene on a Jacobean woman can only be guessed at, to a modem woman it embodies a striking sense of familiarity expressed best by Melvyn R. Leventhal in a short article entitled "Cressida at the Tailhook Convention": In 1991, Paula A. Coughlin, a 32-year-old Navy aviator and officer, was sexually assaulted by male naval aviators at the Las Vegas Tailhook Convention. Male conventioneers formed a gauntlet in a hallway and groped her and other women as they tried to pass through ... the text supports the view that Cressida, like Lieutenant Coughlin, was a victim of sexual harassment and assault by the military ... Ulysses's "observations" are like those of the male officers at the Tailhook Convention. They claimed at the time of the incident, Lieutenant Coughlin was dressed provocatively, engaged in raucous partying and was drunk. 118 If Shakespeare was describing a situation of this kind, he did so with magnificent accuracy, and it does not seem at all unlikely that this kind of scene occurred in the seventeenth century as well as our own. Certainly, this is the kind of situation Cleopatra seems to fear, when she suggests to Iras that "Saucy lictors I Will catch at us like strumpets" (Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.213-214).

117 Susan Willis, The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p.254. 118 Melvyn R. Leventhal, "Cressida at the Tailhook Convention: 'A Woeful Cressid 'Mongst the Merry Greeks!"', The Shakespeare Newsletter (Spring 1997), 5 and 20. 121

When Howard Davies gave Juliet Stevenson some interpretative freedom in his 1985 production for the RSC, the results created a stir that is still being argued about. She fought off the kisses that were presented unequivocally as acts of violation.119 Here seems to be the first Cressida on the British stage to be presented as forced into her betrayal of Troilus by her intense vulnerability, arising from her situation. This Cressida emerged very clearly as a victim, which does not explore the strength of the character, but was perhaps a necessary phase in leaving behind the repetitive image of a woman whose actions come from being naturally lascivious and promiscuous. When Michael Coveney wrote ofDavies's interpretation, "it may be hard cheese on the RSC feminist puritans, but Shakespeare is writing about falsity and sexual wantonness, not rape", 120 he was once again assuming that he knew what Shakespeare intended, and that it was unquestionably not that a group of soldiers surrounding a lone woman would seem threatening to her.

The 1989 Grin and Tonic production was in a unique position, being the very first Australian production, but coming after the feminist revision of the reading of Cressida began. Its interpretation of this scene shows how much information can be conveyed by the manner in which an action is performed: "Cressida's slide into expediency begins when she is greeted by the Greek generals with kisses that avoid her lips, yet at the same time express an obscenity vergmg on rape. If she cannot protect her honour, then surely one man is better than many?"121

In 1996 Ian Judge presented a Cressida who was sincere, but flirtatious. Russell Jackson suggested that this was an "unfashionable" view of her, having been misled by the Stevenson model into thinking that a feminist viewpoint must see Cressida as a victim in order for her not to be a whore. 122 This production, very unsubtle in many of its aspects, made probably the most subtle use of any ofCressida's entrance to the Greek camp. The round of kissing was presented neither as an orgy with an enthusiastic Cressida, nor as a gang rape with a victimized one. Instead, Victoria Hamilton shrank against the wall on sight of this line of

119 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. Agamemnon began by kissing her hand, but then, keeping hold of her hand, kissed her mouth, and the others took their cue from this. 120 Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 27 June 1985. The assertion that the RSC is fertile ground for "feminist puritans" is in itself enough to make Coveney's authority on the matter questionable. 121 Sue Gough, Australian, 31 March 1989. 122 Russell Jackson, "Shakespeare in Production", Shakespeare Quarterly, 48 (1997), 208-215, p.212. 122 soldiers, but then pulled herself together and gamely walked down among them. The kisses were long and on the mouth, her attitude reticent, but not obvious; she pulled back from them, but did not try to slap anyone, as Stevenson had done. She seemed to this viewer to be weighing up whether she was in danger or not, too cautious to make a fuss by protesting, and perhaps escalating the tension, in case their fooling turned out to be harmless. This watchful reticence from Cressida throughout the scene meant that when Ulysses came to make his pronouncement on her, and, unusually, it was done while she was still very much within earshot, it made him look like a schoolyard bully making a girl cry. This is the only production I have seen that made something of the pun where all the Greeks in unison call out "The Trojan's trumpet" (IV.5.65). This was said as Cressida was being led out by Diomedes; she turned around as if slapped, and they all laughed upon realising their unintended double entendre. 123

Judge's version of this scene provides a telling illustration of the difficulties inherent in performance analysis, as not only can a production be very different from one night to the next, but people can see the same performance and read it entirely differently. Smallwood believed that the kisses Cressida received from Patroclus "clearly aroused her" because of "her leg wrapping itself around him".124 As far as I could see it, from both the archival video and the live performance, Patroclus picked her up, and the errant leg was trying to find somewhere to balance when both feet were taken off the ground. Carol Rutter, a writer whose primary concern is to observe the way women are written by visual signifiers on stage, also drew completely different conclusions from mine: In IV.5, she was delighted with the kissing "game" and her own power to deal Menelaus the rebuff that made him the men's laughing stock. Meeting each encounter with pleasure she was clearly unaware that she was performing the steps to an ancient choreography, triple-turning herself from Agamemnon to Achilles to Patroclus - to a whore. 125 Such a wide discrepancy in perception may in the end be unresolvable.

When Britain's Royal National Theatre mounted a production directed by Trevor Nunn in 1999, critics acknowledged the complexity in Sophie Okonedo's portrayal of Cressida. The

123 Archival video held by the Shakespeare Centre Library. 124 Smallwood, p.214. 125 Rutter, Enter the Body, p. 130. 123

"kissed in general" scene (which was done to music, in a kind of ritualistic dance, with Cressida trapped inside a closing circle of Greeks) was viewed as "the production's most shocking"126 and "one of the cruellest in Shakespeare", 127 showing a remarkable change in the course of a few years. Nunn cast black actors in all the Trojan roles except Pandarus, and white actors in all the Grecian roles. African imagery in the Trojan costumes emphasized this cultural dividing line, making the Trojans look noble and vulnerable in the face of the more modem and pragmatic Greek force. 128 This, coupled with Sophie Okonedo's very serious portrayal of Cressida, emphasized the potential to see the character as a war victim, in a similar way to the Davies 1985 version, but with added thematic overtones of colonialism.129

Even when the stated intention of the director is to grant Cressida power in this scene, the dynamics of the rehearsal process can subvert this goal. In Michael Bogdanov's production for the Bell Shakespeare Company (which I was privileged to observe in rehearsal), the scene as it was actually played out showed a power structure that conflicted markedly with the analysis verbalized by the director. Diomedes pushed Cressida into the centre of the stage, and the men then circled her in a predatory way. All the kisses were on the mouth; Achilles grabbed her by the hair, Patroclus lifted her off the ground, Menelaus grabbed her from Patroclus and shoved his hand up between her legs, kissing her, even as she said, "No, I'll be sworn", and Ulysses pulled down the top half of her coat, leaving her naked to the waist, before Diomedes took hold of her and removed her from the scene. Bogdanov had told Blazey Best, who played Cressida, that "this is the first time you feel the power of your sexuality, and that you can make men do things for you". 130 This "power" means that she cannot even prevent herself from being kissed by Menelaus when she tells him expressly not to. It is quite clear that she as an individual is not "making" anyone do anything, and that nothing these men did was "for" her. Whatever the audience was seeing in Cressida, in this production, it was not seeing a woman experiencing power. Power means having the ability to control; she was explicitly shown as having no control over what was happening to her.

126 Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 17 March 1999. 127 John Peter, Sunday Times, 21 March 1999. 128 Archival video held by the Royal National Theatre, London. 129 This was the response of all the reviewers except one, who wrote that Okonedo's "bizarre portrayal of Cressida - as a fickle slut- makes little sense", showing that no audience response is ever entirely uniform, and no Cressida able to completely avoid moral censure. Robert Gore Langton, Express, 20 March 1999. 130 Observation of rehearsal, Bogdanov production, Bell Shakespeare Company, Sydney, June 2000. 124

Any power she has in the text was removed by the directorial decisions: Menelaus kissed her even though she told him not to; she did her best to fend off Ulysses, but he still stripped her.

In looking at the Greek camp scene, and Cressida's exchange with Ulysses, Carol Rutter makes the crucial observation that "Cressida leaves this scene no victim. She scores heavily in the gendered power games this scene plays out. She leaves a winner. So the scene she next plays, with Diomedes, cannot be rationalised as contingent upon some victimization or predisposition." The real threat of Cressida is her demonstration that "women betray men just like men do". 131 In Act V, Cressida chooses to betray Troilus and, while she may have many valid and compelling reasons for making this choice, reason holds little sway with the traditional heroine, with Julia, Juliet or Imogen, prepared to suffer anything for love. She chooses the path of survival, and it must be acknowledged as a choice, unappealing as the alternatives may appear. To choose to survive has never been the noble course, for man or woman, and to prefer dying nobly to living ignominiously was always the more respected alternative in drama. By making this choice, Cressida marks herself as something other than a simple heroine; she is an individual, prepared to think independently and find her own strength if it is lacking in those around her. It is the threat of this independence that directors and designers have attempted to neutralize. I have found no record of a theatre production in which Cressida left the Greek Camp scene a ''winner". She has always left it having been rendered either a whore or a victim. That a woman is a whore or a victim depends largely on the choice made by the men around her about how to treat her; but she is a betrayer by her own choice. Granting Cressida the full authority of her verbal slap in the face to Ulysses has the potential to destabilize the power structures that most directors of this play have chosen to confirm, rather than subvert.

At the end of the scene, it is Diomedes who puts a stop to the round of kissing and insults, by interrupting Ulysses with "Lady, a word. I'll bring you to your father" (IV.5.54). Later, when they converse, Cressida calls Diomedes her "sweet guardian" and he refers to her as "my charge" (V.2.7, 8). Their choice of words demonstrates an awareness in the characters that there is something that Cressida needs to be protected from. It is also interesting to note here that, while all the other men are asking Cressida for kisses (or not bothering to ask), Diomedes asks her instead for "a word".

131 Rutter, "Cressida 's Glove", p.119. 125

The culmination of the relationship between Troilus and Cressida, at V.2, may be unique in romantic literature as being the only one played out without a word being exchanged between them. Hiding in the shadows, Troilus watches Cressida meet and talk with Diomedes, and eventually give him the sleeve that Troilus had given her as a token of his faith. They say their goodbyes not to each other, but into the empty night; she: "Troilus, farewell!", he: "Farewell, revolted fair!" (V .2.113, 193). As the audience watches Thersites watch Ulysses and Troilus watch Cressida and Diomedes, we are put in the unusual situation of being forced into an awareness that we are not so much watching Cressida ourselves, as joining all the others in eavesdropping on her.

Cressida's motives in handing over Troilus's sleeve, and by implication herself, to Diomedes become more interesting the deeper they are investigated. On one level, it is possible to argue that she does it because she is a symbol of faithlessness, everyone knew it, and it is inappropriate to ascribe a further psychology to the action. Cressida was created in order to betray, in Shakespeare character is subservient to plot, contradictions are acceptable, and coherent psychology was not expected of characters written before the twentieth century. Alternatively, it should be acknowledged that Shakespeare was unarguably an excellent psychologist and observer of character, and much that we see in his characters is psychologically recognisable and plausible. His characters may not always demonstrate consistent psychology, but they do, most often, have reasons for their actions. For many years, however, directors did not seem to question what might have prompted Cressida to behave like this. It was enough to know that she was a slut, and that is what sluts do.

By contrast with the majority of directors, Joseph Papp was keenly aware of Cressida's role as a pawn in male war games (what Eve Sedgewick refers to as "the use of women as exchangeable, perhaps symbolic, property for the primary purpose of cementing the bonds of men with men"132). His observations on rehearsing the play were published shortly after those of Jan Kott. Both saw Cressida's handing over of the sleeve as coming from her need to decisively relinquish her claims to her former life and her former self. Papp quotes the actor

132 Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia UP, 1985), p.26. The pertinence of Sedgewick' s work to this play was pointed out by Barbara Hodgdon, "He Do Cressida in Different Voices" English Literary Renaissance 20 (1990), 254-286, p.257; and Carol Rutter, Enter the Body, p.133. 126 playing Cressida in his production as saying, "I could not be untrue to Troilus and retain the token of his love. That would be immoral. I had to free myself honourably from the previous vow."133 Kott says, "She did not have to give it. She could have become Diomedes's mistress without doing so. And yet she could not. First she had to kill everything in herself."134

Placing this scene in the context of some of Shakespeare's other "infidelity" scenes is revealing. Claudio, Othello and Leontes all believe that they are witnessing evidence of their woman's betrayal, but are actually only seeing manifestations of their groundless fears. Given the frequency with which this scenario appears in Shakespeare, is it not feasible to view the assignation between Cressida and Diomedes as a more complex version of the same? In Othello, when Iago wishes to provoke a mental collapse in Othello, he arranges for him to overhear a conversation that will sound as if Cassio is speaking of a liaison with Desdemona, when in fact something entirely different is going on. There is a similarity of presentation here to Ulysses's (the ultimate wily politician) deliberately bringing Troilus (his enemy in war) to overhear a conversation between Cressida and Diomedes. The possibility that Troilus is not seeing what he thinks he sees is, to the best of my knowledge, yet to be adequately explored on stage.

In discussing "Shakespearean misogyny'', Lloyd Davis describes male characters who stage manage situations for female characters, so as to have the opportunity to accuse them of duplicity: "These situations put the female characters in a near inescapable double bind: the men place them in a dramatic framework and then accuse them of inauthentic, histrionic dissembling. The principle of male perception becomes the grounds for female indictment."135 Although Davis does not use Troilus and Cressida among his examples, this scene seems a particularly apt illustration, as Cressida is set up to play a scene with Diomedes by people who will then condemn her for it.

The scene appears to be very deliberately written to be between a man and a woman who is still keeping him at arm's length. She may well give him what he wants in the end, but his

133 Papp, p.71. 134 Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, p.66. 135 Lloyd Davis, "Shakespearean Misogyny", in Shakespeare: Readers, Audiences, Players, ed. R.S. White, C. Edelman and C. Wortham (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1998), 80-90, p.84. 127 lines sound like those of a man who has not yet got it: "Will you remember? ... Nay, but do then, I And let your mind be coupled with your words .... What did you swear you would bestow on me? ... But will you then? ... Give me some token for the surety ofit" (V.2.14-62). It cannot be asserted unequivocally from the text that Cressida is not involved in a sexual liaison with Diomedes, but nor can it be established beyond doubt that she is. She might be or she might not, and the lack of interest in staging the possibilities of the "might not", may say more about the directors than the play.

Shakespeare wrote the actions of Cressida and Diomedes throughout the betrayal scene with consistent restraint. Had he wished to put Cressida's perfidy beyond doubt, it would have been an easy thing to write in an explicit phrase or action. When Pandarus brings the lovers together in Act III, we know from his lines that they kiss several times ("So, so, rub on and kiss the mistress. How now, a kiss in fee-farm? ... What, billing again?" (111.2.48-56)). There is no such line in this scene. Instead, Troilus's responses are to much slighter actions. Here is a representative selection of Cressida's lines to Diomedes, and Troilus's corresponding asides:

CRESSIDA: Now, my sweet guardian! Hark, a word with you. [Whispers]

TROILUS: Yea, so familiar? (V.2.8-9)

CRESSIDA: Hark, one word in your ear.

TROILUS: 0 plague and madness! (V.2.36-37)

CRESSIDA: Nay, but you part in anger.

TROILUS: Doth that grieve thee? 0 withered truth! (V.2.47-48)

CRESSIDA: In faith, I do not. Come hither once again.

TROILUS: She strokes his cheek! (V.2.51, 53) Is it a certainty that a woman is being unfaithful when she is seen to talk intimately with a man, and stroke his cheek? For it must be acknowledged that these are the only things it says in the text that Cressida does with Diomedes on stage. The real point of betrayal in this scene is the handing over of Troilus's favour, and Troilus has lines that suggest that he has not decided absolutely that Cressida is lost to him, before this point. He is still encouraged by the times she rejects Diomedes: 128

DIOMEDES: I do not like this fooling. TROILUS: Nor I, by Pluto; but that that likes not you Pleases me best. (V .2.108-110) This demonstrates that she cannot have too obviously capitulated already. I have not seen a production where Cressida reacted noticeably to Diomedes's line upon gaining possession of Troilus's sleeve, "Tomorrow will I wear it on my helm" (V.2.100), which is the moment when she must face the fact that Troilus will know that she has betrayed him. Once again, a character traditionally supposed to be so full of craft and cunning proves to be too open for her own good.

Unsatisfied with such ambivalence, directors have consistently supplied this scene with action designed to fill in all the evidence of Cressida's lasciviousness that Shakespeare left out. Ambiguity, however, is not generally the default position for a writer, particularly not for one such as the mature Shakespeare. Ambiguity is a presence, not an omission; if it is there in the scene, there is most likely a reason for it. By the scene's conclusion, Troilus has stopped hearing the doubts, the hesitation and the vacillation present in Cressida's lines, but that is no valid reason for those staging or watching the scene to do the same. David McCandless insists that "particularly in performance, the discrepancy between Cressida's ambivalent lapse and Troilus's thundering denunciations could underline the extent to which he wilfully misreads the scene as proof of the inconstancy he requires", 136 but he is discussing a hypothetical production. In practice, the exquisite ambiguity Shakespeare wrote into this scene, most directors have relentlessly written out again. Publicity shots depicting Muriel Pavlow in 1954 and Dorothy Tutin in 1960 both show a heavily made up and flimsily clad woman clinging to Diomedes with apparent fervour, and both promptbooks have notes for kisses and embraces.137 There are no film records of these productions to establish the degree of explicitness of their liaisons, but the promptbooks make it clear that more than whispering was occurring. Reviews describe a series of Cressidas who are eager to be seduced by Diomedes, despite the wavering her lines express throughout the scene. A review ofTutin observed that "Cressida cannot wait to be corrupted. She's avid for it."138 Reviews of Helen Mirren in 1968 describe her as having "moved on to Diomedes with equal facility'' to that she

136 David McCandless, Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1997), p. 154. 137 Promptbooks and production photographs: Shaw production, 1954; Hall and Barton production, 1960. 138 Plays and Players, 7.12 (September 1960), p.9. 129 showed in moving from Pandarus to Troilus, and those of Francesca Annis in 1976 state that "with Diomedes there was no suggestion that she succumbed reluctantly". 139

Barton and Kyle also gave Francesca Annis an obscure, but heavily symbolic, token to make explicit how they saw her character: "Cressida, on her exit up-stage after her definitive betrayal ofTroilus with Diomed, in initial performances threw up her wimple behind to reveal, on the back of her head, the painted mask of a harlot"; 140 "Mr Barton equipped Cressida with a stock courtesan mask, fitted to the back of her head-dress, which she suddenly revealed as she walked off at the end of the betrayal scene."141 This was a final underlining of their point, in case the audience had missed the implications of Cressida changing into the costume of an ancient Greek courtesan in IV.5, but one that assumes a level of formal education in the audience members that will allow them to read what is being signified. The RSC in the 1970s seemed so assured of the homogeneity of its audience that it could assume that those observing would know that courtesans wore masks and, as far as the reviewers went, they were right. Such formal symbolism, however, is inevitably reductive for the character who carries it.

Bogdanov's production provided a clear example of the overwriting of the text by the blocking. In this scene, Troilus has lines that signal whenever there is something happening that is upsetting to him, and it seems appropriate that Diomedes and Cressida's blocking should reflect this. The sexual explicitness of their interaction in Bogdanov's version made nonsense ofTroilus's confusion about what he is seeing. If Cressida is lying flat on her back on a bed with Diomedes lying on top of her and an outraged Troilus cries "she strokes his cheek", one can only wish to point out to him that this is the least of his worries.

Michael Boyd's 1998 production for the RSC came closest to finding a grey area for Cressida, with very little going on between Cressida and Diomedes that could be regarded as impropriety. It perhaps took it to the other extreme, as there was so little that was sexual about this Cressida that it seemed unlikely that Diomedes would have persisted in his suit to her upon receiving so little encouragement, but the exploration of an alternative approach to

139 Both Irving Wardle, Times, 9 August 1968 and 19 August 1976. 140 David, Shakespeare in the Theatre, p.120. 141 Roger Warren, review in Aspects ofShakespeare's Problem Plays, ed. Kenneth Muir and Stanley Wells, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982), p.152. 130 the scene is refreshing. By setting Cressida and Diomedes within a sharply defined corridor oflight, with Troilus separated from her on stage by no more than a shadow, the effect was to keep alive the sense that there could be some other ending to the lovers' story, if only they could step over the line drawn for them by the Greeks and Trojans. This kind of maintenance of tension is familiar from the best productions of tragedy (in which the audience's certain knowledge of an unhappy outcome contends with an instinctive sense of the possibility of a happy outcome), and hints at the dramatic possibilities still to be gleaned from this scene.

Exploring the possibilities, not of ambiguity, but of a different kind of explicitness, was a 1987 Stratford, Ontario production that had a violent Diomedes come close to raping a cowering Cressida, making Troilus seem stubbornly obtuse for not seeing what was really happening in front of him. Lorraine Helms describes the scene: His self-indulgent grieving for what he so wilfully interpreted as Cressida's faithlessness went extravagantly over the top. The audience had just seen a rape scene; they now saw patriarchal ideology at work as Troilus bustled about blaming the victim. 142 Helms noticed, however, a discrepancy between the scene as it was played, and as it was described in the programme notes, which say, "She is sent to join her father in the Greek camp. There, confused and susceptible in her new womanhood, she is quickly seduced by Diomedes."143 Curiously, a similar conflict was apparent between performance and programme in the more recent Bogdanov version. The note "She is reticent to go to the Greek camp, but seems to slot right in there once arrived" seems an idiotic statement when applied to the play as performed, where "reticent" is screaming and wailing, and "slotting right in" involves a clearly implied threat of rape. 144

Cressida's ambiguity is emphasized throughout the play, as Shakespeare clouds a clear audience reaction to her by giving her some extremely cryptic lines, that are hard to make sense of with any certainty. The best example of this is perhaps Cressida's "I have a kind of self resides with you,/ But an unkind self that itself will leave/ To be another's fool" (111.2.143-145). Most interpreters have assumed that she is predicting her own unfaithfulness;

142 Lorraine Helms, "Acts of Resistance", in The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics, ed. Dympna C. Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, Jyotsna Singh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 102-145, p.128. 143 Helms, "Acts of Resistance", p.129. 144 Programme notes (uncredited) for Michael Bogdanov's production, Bell Shakespeare Company, 2000. 131 that the unkind self is the one that will leave Troilus for another man. 145 But then why "itself' will leave rather than "yourself'? The alternative interpretation makes better syntactic sense: that she regards the self that resides with Troilus as unkind for leaving "itself', i.e. herself, to be his fool. It is also in keeping with her main worry being not about betraying someone else, but about betraying herself and in tum being betrayed: "Why have I blabbed? Who shall be true to us I When we are so unsecret to ourselves?" (111.2.120-121 ). What is without question is that she has a sense of herself as divided, that is echoed later when Troilus says "This is and is not Cressid" (V.2.153). She is constructed as fragmented and contradictory, and this suggests that she is not supposed to be taken as a simple stereotype, but to remain complex and enigmatic.

Later, when she explains in soliloquy her defection to Diomedes, she says: Troilus, farewell! One eye yet looks on thee, But with my heart the other eye doth see. Ah, poor our sex! This fault in us I find: The error of our eye directs our mind. What error leads must err. 0, then conclude: Minds swayed by eyes are full of turpitude. (V .2.113-118) She does not specify, however, what is seen by the eye that is seeing with her heart. Is it Diomedes? Or is it the truth, that the heart knows even when the mind does not want to face it, that is, that Troilus does not really love her, has abandoned her, and is not coming to rescue her? "The error of our eye directs our mind", but to which eye is she referring? The eye looking away from Troilus, or the one looking at him? For Helms, "These lines make sense from Troilus's perspective, from Ulysses's or Thersites', but not from Cressida's", but this assessment of the speech may be coloured by the many performances that have presented an interpretation of these lines that does not make sense from Cressida's point ofview.146 lfit is not assumed that the comments of the onlookers are an accurate guide to how to interpret what Cressida is saying, alternatives may become apparent. In fact, there is nothing in this speech that makes it explicit that she is feeling tom between two men, only that she is feeling tom between Troilus and something else. Cressida's emotional separation from Troilus seems

145 See, for example, Carolyn Asp, "In Defence of Cressida", Studies in Philology, 74 (1977), 406-417, p.411. 146 Lorraine Helms, "Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance", in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), 196-203, p.202. 132 to begin with his refusal to protest at her transfer, continues while silently watching his self involved argument with Diomedes, and concludes when her treatment at the hands of the Greek generals shows her beyond a doubt that she is going to need the protection that Troilus has denied her. It is true that her motives are never laid unequivocally bare by the text; when Cressida, not knowing she is overheard, speaks of leaving Troilus, she does not say that she is doing so because she has fears for her safety, but only that her mind is swayed by her eye. Conversely, the lack of any mention of Diomedes in this speech means it cannot be said for certain that he has replaced Troilus in her affections.

The fact that Cressida blames herself should not be given too much weight, as it is traditional in literature and theatre for the woman to see herself as the one at fault, whatever the circumstances of a disintegrating relationship. Lucrece saw her ravishment by Tarquin as her own shame, and Desdemona's last words take upon herself responsibility for her murder. It at least means that Cressida finally has something in common with Troilus, because he blames her too.

It is difficult to theorize in this way without resorting to conjecture, but that is itself a feature built into this scene. Until she leaves Troy, the audience has been party to Cressida's most immediate feelings, but it is important to remain aware that Shakespeare has set up the Cressida of the latter half of the play to speak to the audience only through the filter of others' eyes. Twice in the betrayal scene she "whispers" to Diomedes. The audience does not know what she says; it has only Troilus's scandalized reaction. She then has a short soliloquy, but we also have Thersites, Troilus and Ulysses giving us their interpretation of it, before we have a chance to apply our own. Our last communication with her is even more removed: the audience is not told the contents of her letter, only that Troilus regards it as "no matter from the heart" (V.3.107). By doing this, Shakespeare keeps Cressida elusive to the audience, emphasizing her role as a figure constructed by male need, whose true essence is denied to us. Like Isabella, her final emotional state is not elucidated, and her final statement is silence.

This potential ambiguity has not curbed the need of directors and designers to paint Cressida as a whore, following the long tradition of critics doing the same. The means of doing this is straightforward enough: she will be dressed in something vampish and revealing, and indicate, through gesture, pleasure at all sexual advances; but the motivation for doing so is 133 more intriguing. Carol Cook, though speaking of the text, also astutely described the Cressida of the stage for many years when she wrote that "Cressida is not mistaken in her assumption that legibility breeds contempt. The legible woman becomes a degraded object, though an object still made for fantasy." 147 The reductive drawing of Cressida as the fantasy of the perpetually available woman displays a need to render her knowable. Knowledge is power, and to know Cressida is to have power over her. But Shakespeare has deliberately set Cressida up to be unknowable to the audience from the time she leaves Troy. He writes her to be powerful, but this power is too threatening for most directors to allow it on stage, unchecked. There is a lack of self-reflection in the decision to make Cressida explicitly readable through her costume. The designers who have dressed Cressida as a whore have sought to remove her unknowability without acknowledging its existence in the first place. They are "correcting" Shakespeare's text without putting forward a case for seeing it as flawed.

Janet Adelman has noted how the effect oflayer upon layer of observers removes us from Cressida and the intimate relationship the audience has with her thoughts in Acts I-IV: At exactly the moment at which we most need to understand what Cressida is doing, we not only are given no enlightenment, but are forced to acknowledge our distance from Cressida by the structure of the scene itself. In 5.3 we are allowed to see Cressida only through the intervening commentary of Troilus, Ulysses and Thersites. 148 Yet this structure does provide a significant amount of information about the other characters involved. It is surely not by chance that Shakespeare has Cressida, looking on the sleeve, say "Thy master now lies thinking on his bed / Of thee and me, and sighs, and takes my glove, / And gives memorial dainty kisses to it" (V .2.84-86). Troilus, of course, is doing no such thing, but is standing in front of our eyes, completely failing to notice how implicated he is by her trusting words. He did not ask Ulysses to take him to see Cressida, but only to watch her.

Ulysses, for his part, puts on an extraordinary performance of maintaining the secrecy of their position: "This place is dangerous, I The time right deadly" (V.2.40-41). This in spite of the fact that the Greek camp is currently full ofrevelling Trojans, and that no Greek soldier is

147 Carol Cook, "Unbodied Figures of Desire", in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theatre and Theory, ed. Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990), 177-195, p.180. 148 Adelman, "This Is and Is Not Cressid", p.128. 134 likely to take issue with General Ulysses being wherever he likes. His ostentatious fearfulness is, quite simply, nonsense. Given that Ulysses cannot be hiding from the Trojans or the Greeks, there is only one person that it is vital must not discover them, and that is Cressida. If she were given the opportunity to speak to Troilus, she would gain the chance to be heard, instead of merely overheard, and any schemes Ulysses may have for destabilising Troilus would come undone.

Troilus is only too happy to play into his hands, and maintain his opportunity to be wronged and alone, which is exactly how he has always preferred things. He gave himself away in the parting scene, with his speedy acquiescence in her being traded, and the reiteration of his injunction to her to "be true" while effusively praising the qualities of the Grecian youths. This is a key point in Rene Girard's reading of the play, and also for David McCandless, who writes "Troilus tries, from the beginning, to seduce ... Cressida into the betrayal that will substantiate his cherished self-image."149 Adelman, too, notices this aspect of Troilus, but suggests that this is the authorized view of the text, instead of reading it as a constructed subversion: Troilus needs to imagine a Cressid who betrays him; and insofar as his expectation that she will be false spoils Cressida's trust in herself and him in 3.2 and 4.2, his need in part creates her infidelity ... But for the most part the play does not seem to hold Troilus responsible for Cressida's betrayal; in fact the plot shifts the blame from Troilus to Cressida, making both of them unproblematically live up to their names. 150 She specifically involves the author in reading the story along its traditional lines: "In the end it is easier - for Troilus and for Shakespeare - to call Cressida whore than to acknowledge the painful paradoxes at the heart of the love plot" and speaks of "Troilus's covert need for Diomed - and Shakespeare's own need to write Cressida whore". 151 It is true that the injustice of Troilus and Ulysses writing Cressida whore is not as explicitly drawn as that of Othello and Iago doing the same to Desdemona, but subtlety need not be read as complicity. If Shakespeare shows himself repeatedly willing to "redefine the source of corruption,

149 McCandless, p.194. 150 Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies ofMaternal Origin in Shakespeare's Plays, Hamlet to The Tempest (London: Routledge, 1992), p.57. 151 Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, pp.62, 64. 135 locating it not in the unstable female body, but in the diseased male imagination", 152 why should he not be doing this here? Obviously, we have no way ofreclaiming Shakespeare's intention on this point, but I would argue that to read in Troilus and Cressida a deliberate subversion of the traditional tale makes it a cleverer, more sophisticated, more interesting play. It does seem excessively confident to call Troilus and Cressida's relationship with their reputations "unproblematic".

The remaining key players in this scene are Thersites and Diomedes, placed at either end of the spectrum of awareness of the full story. Thersites watches Ulysses and Troilus watching Cressida and Diomedes, and voices his observations directly to the audience. His position as the only one onstage who sees all the participants in the betrayal scene makes him appear to be something of a choric figure, clarifying events for the audience, but he subverts this role in a unique way. With his bitter and unremittingly negative perspective, he also gets between the audience and the action, and interferes with the audience's ability to find its own clear image of what is going on between those at the heart of the scene. Diomedes, by contrast, knows least about what is going on, and is closest to the centre of the action. He is presented as a clear contrast to Troilus, and traditionally has come off worst in the eyes of the critics (Boas writes that "she exchanges a chivalrous adorer for a harsh and imperious taskmaster", 153 and Asp, more recently, that "Cressida, idealized by Troilus as a courtly mistress, is to Diomed only a common prostitute". 154), but this may be merely conventional prejudice in favour of the protagonist. Certainly, he is not given to fancy talk. Helen to Troilus is "a pearl" (11.2.81 ), to Diomedes "contaminated carrion weight" (IV. I. 73). But we note also that to Troilus "what's aught but as it is valued?" (11.2.52). Presumably this includes Cressida. Diomedes will prize Cressida "to her own worth" (IV .4.132). This has generally been seen as insulting to her by those who assume that her worth will not be much ("Diomedes, who values her so little that he wastes few words on her, prizing her, simply, 'to her own worth' ."155), and Troilus clearly takes offence at the idea, but from a woman's point of view it may be much more appealing for a man to suggest that she carries inherent value than that his valuing her is, in and of itself, the thing that makes her valuable.

152 Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, p.69. 153 Boas, p.376. 154 Asp, "Th' Expense of Spirit", p.356. 155 Gayle Green, "Shakespeare's Cressida: 'A Kind of Self", in The Woman's Part, ed. C. Lenz, G. Greene and C. Neely (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 133-149, p.143. 136

Given Cressida's penchant for unadorned speech, it seems Diomedes may be a better match for her anyway, and he does nothing to mark himself as an unworthy suitor. Ulysses has noticed that he "neither looks on heaven nor on earth, / But gives all gaze and bent of amorous view/ On the fair Cressid" (IV.5.281-283). So he appears to be genuinely smitten, and not casual in his attentions. When he captures Troilus's horse, he instructs his servant thus: Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse; Present the fair steed to my Lady Cressid. Fellow, commend my service to her beauty; Tell her I have chastised the amorous Trojan And am her knight by proof. (V.5.1-5) This is proper behaviour for a good courtly suitor. His escorting of Cressida from Troy to the Greek camp, his dining with her father, his wearing of the sleeve she gave him, and finally his presentation of the horse, mark Diomedes's suit to Cressida as public. This is one more contrast to Troilus, who cautioned Aeneas, "We met by chance; you did not find me here" (IV.2.73). Secrecy was an important point in the rule book of the courtly lover but, paradoxically, a medieval knight would dedicate his victories to his lady by publicly wearing her favour. The contrasting actions ofTroilus and Diomedes suggest that either option was open to them.

The nature of her greeting on her arrival in the Greek camp would have driven home to Cressida that the choice for a woman is to be the property of a single man, or to be common property. Troilus has made it clear that he is not going to protect her, Diomedes that he will. In the end Cressida's choice ofDiomedes may be a simple choice to survive, which is probably the most confronting thing she could do in the eyes of the patriarchal order. James O'Rourke recognized how few options are open to her: "The only means of escaping this infamy is to take Juliet's course, suicide, which is what generations of Cressida-bashers have implicitly demanded ofher."156 This is, of course, what Dryden decided to do with her.

One curious aspect of this play's production history is the scant regard paid to the presentation of Diomedes in relation to Cressida. While it seems unthinkable to cast anything but an attractive and nubile Cressida, Diomedes has often stretched credibility if the director wished

156 James O'Rourke, "Rule in Unity and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1992), 139-158, p.156. 137 the audience to believe that Cressida was succumbing to him out of anything but the direst necessity. Only one Diomedes I have seen played his tryst with Cressida with any sense of a man trying to win over a woman. In Mendes's 1990 production in Stratford, Diomedes's seductive tone was apparent. When the show transferred to London, however, there was a change of actor and of manner, and Diomedes was back to ranting at her. 157 This may be one more manifestation of the instinctive desire to see Cressida punished. Making Diomedes a brute makes Cressida's final position in the play pitiful. If he, conversely, is more attractive than Troilus in some ways, and if due weight is given to the chivalrous aspects of his behaviour towards her, particularly his willingness to publicly protect her, Cressida ends the story in an advantageous position.

The lack of a resolution face to face between Troilus and Cressida has troubled many. All the most recent productions felt the need to bring Cressida back into the story at or near the end, rather than have her disappear as early as the text suggests. Bogdanov brought Cressida out to stand forlornly in the shadows as Troilus read her letter. Boyd's production made a significant change to the concluding line order, moving Pandarus's epilogue forward, and concluding with Troilus's lines from an earlier scene "I reek not though thou end my life today" (V.6.27). 158 He repeated this line three times while standing in a centrestage spotlight, as Cressida slowly came forward from the darkness to stand behind his shoulder. It was Nunn, however, who took the most liberties with the text, rearranging Cressida's final soliloquy to be inserted between Troilus's lines upon reading her letter, thus granting them the final meeting that Shakespeare specifically denies them. 159 This speaks of an instinctive need in people for a resolution, but leaving loose ends untied is not necessarily a flaw in the play. War and love are by their nature messy, and while classical Western narrative has sought to rein that in, by providing conclusions and morals, a challenge to that neat form has plenty to say in and of itself.

Rutter believes that "in V.2 Cressida acts like Achilles: she betrays Troilus and fidelity as he betrays Hector and heroism. The play doesn't apologise for either of them."160 This is the truth, but it is not the whole truth, for Troilus had a role to play in both these betrayals.

157 Archival videos of the Stratford and London productions. 158 Promptbook: Boyd production, 1998. 159 Promptbook: Nunn production, 1999. 160 Rutter, Enter the Body, p.126. 138

Hector himself betrays honour by refusing to listen to his own reason, and that of his father, sister and wife. Cassandra, the prophetess, knows exactly what his honour is worth when she tells him, "The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows. / They are polluted off rings, more abhorred/ Than spotted livers in the sacrifice" (V.3.16-18)). Troilus pushes them both into their respective dooms. It is Troilus who argues Hector around when he would abandon the war, he who calls Cassandra a "foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl" (V.3.79), when she would dissuade Hector from fighting a doomed fight, and he who deserts Cressida and leaves her to fend for herself. He does not force either Hector or Cressida to betray, but he wants them to do it. The link between Cressida and Hector in their relationship to Troilus is apparent to M.M. Burns: When Hector and Cressida give in to Troilus, then, their resemblance becomes even closer; they both give in partly because they love Troilus and partly because they cannot argue against the traditions which he musters against them. One of the tragic ironies of the play is that Troilus contributes so largely to his own dual bereavement of Hector and Cressida. 161 The fact that Troilus is himself a betrayer helps forge the whole shape of the play. The inescapable point - and Shakespeare distils this to perfection in the betrayal scene by constructing it with so many participants on stage at once - is that all are implicated in this network of selfishness and duplicity. Cressida's betrayal is neither wholly the betrayal by Cressida nor the betrayal of Cressida, but both.

Many have tried to turn Troilus into an unambiguous hero, but even those with doubts about him have sometimes tried to find a hero in Hector. Shakespeare was careful to include enough details to subvert this possibility, too. We are told that, after being struck down by Ajax, he "chid Andromache and struck his armourer" (1.2.6), so he is willing to take out his frustrations on those around him. When Hector sends his challenge to the Greeks, it is on the basis of defending the quality of his woman: "He bath a lady, wiser, fairer, truer,/ Than ever Greek did compass in his arms" (1.3.275-276). This is done in a formal way, reminiscent of medieval chivalric tradition. When we see him with the woman in question in V.3, however, he is "chiding" her again, and the impassioned pleas of this lady that he proclaimed so wise are not worth listening to. Like Troilus, Hector is savagely protective of his lady as a

161 M.M. Burns, "Troilus and Cressida: The Worst of Both Worlds", Shakespeare Studies, 13 (1980), 105-130, p.116. 139 possession, as a "theme of honour and renown" (11.2.199), but utterly careless of her as a person.

Most importantly, it is Hector who confronts Shakespeare's metaphor for this whole society, the golden armour. Hector the noble, the valiant, the merciful, is shown to be not above killing a man because he wants what this man possesses, and a material possession at that: I like thy armour well; I'll frush it and unlock the rivets all, But I'll be master of it. Wilt thou not, beast, abide? Why then, fly on. I'll hunt thee for thy hide. (V.6.29-32)

Thy goodly armour thus has cost thy life. (V.9.2) His description of the body from which he strips the armour as "most putrefied core so fair without" (V.9.1) completes the metaphor. At the end of Helen's only scene, Paris suggests they go to Hector, newly returned from battle and help him: "You shall do more/ Than all the island kings: disarm great Hector" (111.1.14 7-148). His comment is unintentionally prescient: Hector can only be disarmed by a rotten core in a beautiful shell. This, then, is Troy: the codes of honour set up in order to be circumvented; the Greek courtesy that masks threat and disrespect; Troilus's "firm faith" (111.2.104) that masks his refusal to really engage with Cressida as a human being; Cressida's honesty that stands in for weakness; Helen herself, and everybody's refusal to face up to the corruption around them and within them.

As feminist criticism developed and became more diverse, Cressida's actions have begun to receive a treatment commensurate with such complexity, that goes beyond the early feminist approaches of either writing her off as a male-constructed stereotype, or absolving her as a war victim. Rutter's insistence on the power of Cressida being acknowledged as responsible for her betrayal has already been noted. Grace Tiffany believes that Shakespeare sets Cressida up to be complicit in her harsh fate (both the fate of being left to fend for herself amongst the Greeks, and the fate of becoming a byword for falsehood) by having her in different places and ways say "no" to her fate, but always ensuring her "no" is not loud enough to be heard. She calls this "female self-erasure". 162

162 Grace Tiffany, "Not Saying No: Female Self-Erasure in Troilus and Cressida", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 35.1 (Spring 1993), 44-56. 140

O.W. Campbell and 0.J. Campbell wanted Cressida seen as the "villain of the piece", 163 Joyce Carol Oates also calls her "evil" and "villainous", 164 and Judith Cook includes her in her chapter titled "The Villainesses", 165 but in this war there are no villains because there are no heroes: all are complicit. Most productions have shown themselves unable to resist playing a game of heroes and villains, which means there is still a great deal to be explored on stage in seeking the grey areas, affirming the messiness, and revealing, not disguising, Cressida's unknowable nature. The balance of this play demands an awareness that no major character is free from the metaphor of the golden armour. The one possible exception is Cassandra. She alone is willing to speak uncompromisingly honestly - and it has driven her mad.

Onstage, the presentation of Cressida seems to operate along a fault line that occurs in North America with Papp's 1965 production, and in Britain not until Davies's production in 1985, when she begins to be taken seriously, rather than trivialized. The shift in the interpretation of this role originates not with a simple engendering of cynicism about the behaviour of men towards women, nor with the early feminist idea of women as victims of men and victims of war. The fundamental point of change begins with Simone de Beauvoir's proposition that the subject has always been male, and the suggestion that if the subject were made female, truth would look different. 166 What all John Barton's productions had in common, and shared with Glen Byam Shaw's, Tyrone Guthrie's and Terry Hands's, is that they presented Cressida exclusively from the point of view of a male subject assessing her from outside. The change happened when Papp, Appel, Davies and Boyd - and I would even add Judge - allowed the actor playing Cressida to be her own subject, and to attempt to find a way to present Cressida's words and actions from her own point of view. No change that takes place in the theatre is ever single or absolute; nothing that is changed once is changed for all time. There was much in the Judge production that hearkened back to the Barton productions, and Bogdanov did not back up his indictment of glorifying war with an indictment of labelling women according to their sexuality. There was a time, however, not long ago, when Cressida was seen in only one way. It was feminism, and the potential for seeing from a woman's point of view, that changed this.

163 Olwen W. Campbell, quoted in 0. J. Campbell, p.210. Oscar Campbell went so far as to call her depiction of Cressida as villain "unassailable"! 164 Joyce Carol Oates, The Edge ofImpossibility: Tragic Forms in Literature (London: Victor Gollancz, 1976), p.29. 165 Judith Cook, Women in Shakespeare (London: Virgin, 1990), pp.117-118. 166 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953). 141

The play in performance has reaped the greatest benefits from this altered perspective. A character regarded as straightforward has become complex, and the possibilities for performative interpretation consequently become exponentially wider and richer. What becomes most striking about the character of Cressida is that she is an ordinary, fallible young woman, whose life is made a mess by the war games of men. In this she is no different from anyone else in the play, as they are all brought to what is worst in themselves by a social order that cannot disentangle itself from its habit of rendering everything valueless by putting a price on it. 142

Conclusion

Isabella and Cressida share a unique position in Shakespeare as the most insidiously disruptive forces. The more obvious mavericks, such as Joan la Pucelle, Margaret of Anjou, and Tamora, all find suitable punishment for their transgressions within the text. Even Rosalind and Beatrice, who begin by challenging male expectations, end by complying with them. Strong-willed women are far from being in short supply in Shakespeare, but Isabella and Cressida are the ones who persist in refusing to be the people the men around them want them to be, or to be the heroines the audience wants them to be. They are neither re incorporated unequivocally into society's conventional structures (it may be that Isabella marries the Duke at the end, but there is no line to remove the doubt that surrounds this assumption), nor punished for remaining outside society's guidelines. Two characters, far divided in their circumstances, but who are able, between them, to describe everything we need to know about our society's attitude to female experience. In Isabella's case, male anger is called anger, female anger is called hysteria. For Cressida, "men who betray men in Shakespeare are called traitors ... women who betray men, though, aren't traitors, they're called whores". 1

The similarities between this unlikely pair go deeper than the discomfort with which they have been received, to the text itself. Isabella is credited with "prone and speechless dialect, / Such as move men" (1.3.173-174), while Cressida has "language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, / Nay, her foot speaks" (IV.5.56-57). In both cases, the women are being made responsible for the way others read their bodies. The converse of essentially the same idea is that, when a woman's body is supposed to be able to tell you all you need to know about her, it absolves you of the requirement to listen to her words. In addition, both Isabella and Cressida initially make choices for themselves, but then begin to find themselves in a position where decisions are being made for them by controlling male figures. In considering the three "problem plays", Poonam Trivedi writes: "The most striking feature of these three plays is, therefore, their representation of strong and dominant female characters who are then controlled and mediated, of a female power and potency that is then deflected and appropriated."2 She is, of

1 Carol Chillington Rutter, Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage (London: Routledge, 2001), p.114. 2 Poonam Trivedi, Shakespeare's Problem Plays and Problem Women: Feminist Contexts (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University ofBrimingham, 1988), p.399. 143 course, including Helena in this assessment, but it is hard to see how Helena's actions are appropriated, and even less that they are deflected - she seems to achieve her own ends, without interference, all the way to the conclusion. Isabella and Cressida, on the other hand, both begin as very autonomous and active individuals, but have their power over their actions taken away from them from around the middle of the play. They also share a structural journey that takes them from early scenes, where their thoughts are spoken very directly to the audience, to a point where they become much more separated from the viewer, their motives and responses filtered and obscured.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Shakespearean criticism broadened and deepened in two notable ways that have both had a transforming influence on responses to Isabella and Cressida: the emergence of performance theory and feminist theory. These two forms of criticism have encouraged the questioning of the way both character and action had previously been read, and have demanded an acknowledgement of the contexts involved, and an awareness of who is making the interpretative decisions. The conclusions drawn, however, have been far from uniform. Both characters have been re-assessed by some feminist critics as examples of women refusing to succumb to male expectation, and by others as illustrations of women's victimization by men; by some as powerful examples of female autonomy, and by others as initially powerful women who lose their autonomy to male politicking. It has been suggested both that the playwright was complicit in subjecting his female characters to the titillation and censure of the male gaze, and that he challenged it by making the audience aware of its voyeurism. Perhaps these two characters are, in fact, Shakespeare's best mirrors for the concerns of the observer, having the unusual potential to be read as either victor or victim in the narratives' power struggles.

Critics writing about characters in Shakespeare fall roughly into two groups: those who deal with the text in and of itself, without reference to its application to performance (e.g. W.W. Lawrence, J.M.W. Tillyard, Janet Adelman), and those who examine the way the raw material of the text has been applied to theatre practice (e.g. Carol Rutter, Penny Gay, David McCandless). The former have a general tendency to speak of the characters as fixed entities, without reference to the variations created by performance decisions, the latter to discuss choices made in the production process, and what these communicate to the audience. Although both camps have produced feminist perspectives, it is those with an involvement in 144 performance analysis who have uncovered the multiplicity of possibilities within each character, and suggested just how much of interpretation has always depended on the interests, and indeed prejudices, of the interpreter. It is only a short step further to question where the power of interpretation lies, and speculate on the potential in the characters for the subversion of assumptions.

The stage history of these characters suggests a long period of diminishing their disruptive potential. Isabella sometimes had lines cut that risked making her character unappealing, as in Peter Brook's 1950 production, and more commonly she would be unambiguously paired with the Duke in the final scene, creating the traditional comedic marriage ending. A brutal or unattractive Diomedes makes Cressida appear suitably punished for moving on from Troilus, and costuming her in a sexually provocative way trivializes the nature of her betrayal of him. Both characters have most often been identified solely by the degree and nature of their sexuality, without due consideration to the other aspects of their character and circumstances. Within the text, both Isabella and Cressida maintain the power to say no. This power has frequently been curtailed or subsumed in performance, even by those directors claiming an interest in a feminist perspective. This includes Charles Marowitz's 1970 adaptation of Measure for Measure, in which Isabella was made to submit to Angelo's demand, and Michael Bogdanov's 2000 production of Troilus and Cressida, in which Menelaus and Ulysses molested Cressida even as she denied them the kisses for which they asked.

Conventional interpretations of these characters are frequently characterized by readings that rely on spurious or absent textual evidence. In the case of Isabella, the reading of her as emotionally flawed and in need of the spiritual rescue of the Duke depends on a reading of the motives of the Duke that can include no textual support. Despite his many soliloquies and addresses to the audience, he never indicates that his goal is the transformation of Isabella, or implies a belief in any deficiency in her character. In the case of Cressida, the reading of her character as enthusiastically receptive to all sexual advances relies on reading her lines as untruthful and the lines of other characters, such as Ulysses, as unbiased assessments, when they in fact demonstrate a vested interest. In spite of the lack of all but the most speculative textual support, these readings appear to have formed the basis of the majority of the twentieth century's stagings of these plays. 145

The roles began to be explored in new ways when a woman who behaves in a manner that opposes the demands of men began to be seen as potentially admirable, rather than reprehensible. Instances of empowering their disruptive aspects on stage seem to have begun in the 1960s and '70s, but only became common in the 1980s. Joseph Papp's 1965 Cressida, and Keith Rack's 1974 Isabella each registered protest at becoming the chattels of their men. Showing Angelo's proposition to Isabella as an assault, as in Nicholas Hytner's 1987 and Trevor Nunn's 1991 Measure for Measures, gave due weight to her experience, as did the same approach to the Greeks' behaviour towards Cressida in Howard Davies's 1985 and Nunn's 1999 productions of Troilus and Cressida. Such an approach, however, is still only sporadic. Performances and critics more often attempt to neutralize and control Isabella and Cressida as a disruptive force, and try to downplay their way of treating men in a way to which men are not accustomed to being treated: Cressida, as if one man is as good as another, Isabella, as if no man is of much interest.

It is tempting to speak of the performance histories of these plays in terms of a movement away from ignoring the implications of sexual politics, gender power structures and the perspective of the female characters towards performances informed and influenced by all these things. The reality has been much more mixed. Ideas put forward in the 1960s and '70s have at times seemed to be abandoned by later productions. Feminist readings are rarely refuted, but frequently ignored. Points raised about the socio-political context of the positions that Isabella and Cressida find themselves in, at times seem to have no significant impact on subsequent writing. Certainly debate exists now that simply was not there less than fifty years ago, and many performances have experimented with different influences. It would be satisfying, however, to see those who write or direct with the voice of the Establishment offer some significant engagement with the feminist ideas that have been in circulation for some thirty years now. Feminism in Shakespearean theatre has a presence, but one that continues to be far too easy to ignore. Still, the escalation of feminist awareness in the theatre has prompted these characters to be explored in some stimulating and enlightening ways. Cressida and Isabella's full potential as a force disruptive to the patriarchal order may be yet to be fully realized, but the move towards finding more empowering interpretations is clear and undeniable. Fig. 21

Fig. 20

How Stratford liked its problem women.

Fig.20: Barbarn Jefford, 1950. Fig.21: Dorothy Tutin, 1960. 146

Appendix: Productions Referred To

Measure for Measure

Year Theatre Director Isabella

1950 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Peter Brook Barbara Jefford

1962 Royal Shakespeare Company John Blatchley Judi Dench

1970 RSC John Barton Estelle Kohler

1972 Nimrod Theatre, Sydney John Bell Anna Volska

1974 RSC Keith Hack Francesca Annis

1978 RSC Barry Kyle Paola Dionisotti

1983 RSC Adrian Noble Juliet Stevenson

1985 Sydney Theatre Company Nick Enright Susan Lyons

1985 Shakespeare Festival, Ontario Michael Bogdanov

1987 RSC Nicholas Hytner Josette Simon

1990 USA* David McCandless

1991 RSC Trevor Nunn Claire Skinner

1994 RSC Stephen Pimlott Stella Gonet

1998 RSC Michael Boyd Clare Holman

2000 Melbourne Theatre Company Simon Phillips Paula Arundell

Rex Cramphom directed productions in Sydney and Adelaide in 1973, 1980, 1985 and 1988.

* McCandless refers, in Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1997), to a production he directed in 1990, but does not give further details, such as place or cast. 147

Troilus and Cressida

Year Theatre Director Cressida

1954 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Glen Byam Shaw Muriel Pavlow

1956 Old Vic, London Tyrone Guthrie Rosemary Harris

1960 Royal Shakespeare Company Peter Hall, John Barton Dorothy Tutin

1965 New York Shakespeare Festival Joseph Papp

1968 RSC John Barton Helen Mirren

1976 RSC John Barton, Barry Kyle Francesca Annis

1981 RSC Terry Hands Carol Royle

1984 Utah Shakespeare Festival Libby Appel Adrienne Thompson

1985 RSC Howard Davies Juliet Stevenson

1989 Grin and Tonic, Brisbane Bryan Nason Jane Menelaus

1990 RSC Sam Mendes Amanda Root

1996 RSC Ian Judge Victoria Hamilton

1998 RSC Michael Boyd Jayne Ashbourne

1999 Royal National Theatre, London Trevor Nunn Sophie Okonedo

2000 Bell Shakespeare Company Michael Bogdanov BlazeyBest 148

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Massey, Daniel, "The Duke in Measure for Measure", in Players ofShakespeare 2, ed. by Robert Smallwood and Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 13-31

McGuire, Philip C., Speechless Dialect: Shakespeare's Open Silences (Berkeley: California University Press, 1985)

McLuskie, Kathleen, "The Patriarchal Bard: Feminist Criticism and Shakespeare: King Lear and Measure for Measure", in Political Shakespeare, ed. by John Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), pp. 88-108

McNally, Mary Patricia, "A Vicious Sex Hysteric or a Thing Enskied and Sainted: A Survey of Twentieth Century Stage Representations and Criticism of Isabella in Measure for Measure" (unpublished Masters thesis, University of Birmingham, 1990)

Miles, Rosalind, The Problem ofMeasure for Measure (London: Vision, 1976)

Minchinton, Mark, "Experiments in Shakespeare: Rex Cramphom and Measure for Measure, 1973 - 88", in O Brave New World: Two Centuries ofShakespeare on the Australian Stage, eds John Golder and Richard Madelaine (Sydney: Currency Press, 2001), pp. 200-208

Nathan, Norman, "The Marriage of Duke Vincentio and Isabella", Shakespeare Quarterly, 7 (1956), 43-45

Neely, Carol Thomas, Broken Nuptials in Shakespeare's Plays (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1985)

Nevo, Ruth, "Measure for Measure: Mirror for Mirror", Shakespeare Survey, 40 (1987), 107-122

Nichols, Graham, Text and Performance: Measure for Measure (London: Macmillan, 1986)

Oppen, Alice Amott, Shakespeare: Listening to the Women (Adelaide: Seaview Press, 2000)

Pope, Elizabeth, "The Renaissance Background of Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 2 (1949), 66-83

Quiller-Couch, Arthur, ed., Measure for Measure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922)

Radel, Nicholas, "Reading as a Feminist", in Theory in Practice: Measure for Measure, ed. by Nigel Wood (Bristol: Open University Press, 1996), pp. 90-132

Riefer, Marcia, "Instruments of Some More Mightier Member: The Constriction of Female Power in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Quarterly, 35 (1984), 157-169 157

Rocklin, Edward L., "Measured Endings", Shakespeare Survey, 53 (2000), 213-232

Rose, Jacqueline, "Sexuality in the Reading of Shakespeare: Hamlet and Measure for Measure", in Alternative Shakespeares, ed. by John Drakakis (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 95-118

Rovine, Harvey, Silence in Shakespeare: Drama, Power and Gender (London: UMI Research Press, 1987)

Schanzer, Ernest, "The Marriage Contracts in Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 13 (1960), 81-89

Seiden, Melvin, Measure for Measure: Casuisty and Artistry (Washingtion D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990)

Stevenson, David Lloyd, The Achievement a/Measure for Measure (New York: Cornell University Press, 1966)

Taylor, Mark, "Farther Privileges: Conflict and Change in Measure for Measure", Philological Quarterly, 73 (1994), 169-193

Wedell, Allison, "Juggling Feathers: Playing Isabella in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure" (unpublished M.F.A. thesis, University of Louisville, 1996)

Weil, Herbert S., "The Options of the Audience: Theory and Practice in Peter Brook's Measure for Measure", Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 27-35

Wharton, T.F., The Critics Debate: Measure for Measure (London: Macmillan, 1989)

Williamson, Jane, "The Duke and Isabella on the Modem Stage", in The Triple Bond: Plays, Mainly Shakespearean, in Performance, ed. by Joseph G. Price (London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), pp. 140-169

Wood, Nigel, Theory in Practice: Measure for Measure (Bristol: Open University Press, 1996)

Zender, Karl F., "Isabella's Choice", Philological Quarterly, 73 (1994), 77-93 158

Newspaper Reviews of Productions: Measure for Measure

The Stage 16 August 1956

Daily Telegraph 15 August 1956

Sydney Morning Herald 13 February 1972

Times 13November 1987

Sunday Times 22 September 1991 John Peter

Daily Telegraph 20 September 1991 Charles Spencer

Times 20 September 1991 Jeremy Kingston

Guardian 20 September 1991 Michael Billington

Independent and Guardian 22 October 1994 Paul Taylor

Evening Standard 1 May 1998 Nicholas de Jongh

Independent 2May 1998 Paul Taylor

Observer 3May 1998 Susannah Clapp 159

Cressida

Adams, Howard, "What Cressid Is", in Sexuality and Politics in Renaissance Drama, ed. by Carole Levin and Karen Robertson (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1991), pp. 75-93

Adamson, Jane, New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1987)

Adelman, Janet, "This is and is not Cressid: The Characterization of Cressida", in The (M)other Tongue: Essays in Feminist Psychoanalytic Interpretation, ed. by S. Nelson Garner, C. Kahane and M. Sprengnether (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 119-141

Aggeler, Geoffry, "Utah Shakespearean Festival", Shakespeare Quarterly, 36 (1984), 230-231

Asp, Carolyn, "Th' Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame", Shakespeare Quarterly, 22 (1971), 345-357

__, "In Defense of Cressida", Studies in Philology, 74 (1977), 406-417

Barfoot, C.C., "Troilus and Cressida: 'Praise Us as We are Tasted"', Shakespeare Quarterly, 39 (1988), 45-57

Bevington, David, ed., Troilus and Cressida, 3rd Arden edn (Walton on Thames: Nelson, 1998)

Bowen, Barbara, Gender in the Theatre of War: Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, (London: Garland, 1993)

Brooke, Tucker, Essays on Shakespeare and Other Elizabethans (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948)

Brooks, Harold, "Troilus and Cressida: Its Dramatic Unity and Genre", in "Fanned and Winnowed Opinions": Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins, ed. by John W. Mahon and Thomas A. Pendleton (London: Methuen, 1987), pp. 6-25

Brower, Reuben A., Hero and Saint: Shakespeare and the Gaeco-Roman Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971)

Brown, John Russell, "Three Directors: A Review of Recent Productions", Shakespeare Survey, 14 (1961), 129-137

Bums, M.M., "Troilus and Cressida: The Worst of Both Worlds", Shakespeare Studies, 13 (1980), 105-130

Campbell, Oscar J., Comical/ Satyre and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (San Marino: Huntington, 1938)

Chaucer, Geoffrey, Troilus and Criseyde, ed. by Nigel Coghill (London: Penguin, 1971) 160

Chames, Linda, "So Unsecret to Ourselves: Notorious Identity and the Material Subject in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 40 (1989), 413-440

Cook, Carol, "Unbodied Figures of Desire", in Performing Feminism: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. by Sue-Ellen Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 177-195

David, Richard, "Stratford 1954", Shakespeare Quarterly, 5 (1954), 385-394

Davis, Lloyd, "Shakespearean Misogyny", in Shakespeare: Readers, Audiences, Players. ed. by R.S. White, C. Edelman and C. Wortham (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1998), pp. 80-90 de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, trans. by H.M. Parshley (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953)

Donaldson, E. Talbot, "Cressid False, Criseyde Untrue: An Ambiguity Revisited", in Poetic Traditions ofthe English Renaissance, ed. by Maynard Mack and George deforest Lord (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 67-83

__, The Swan at the Well: Shakespeare Reading Chaucer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985)

Dusinberre, Juliet, "Troilus and Cressida and the Definition of Beauty'', Shakespeare Survey, 36 (1983), 85-95

Elton, W.R., Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Inns of Court Revels (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)

Enright, Nick, A Property ofthe Clan (Sydney: Currency, 1994)

Foakes, R.A., "Troilus and Cressida Reconsidered", University of Toronto Quarterly, 32 (1963), 142-154

Freund, Elizabeth, "Ariachne's Broken Woof', in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. by Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (London: Methuen, 1985), pp. 19-36

Girard, Rene, Theatre ofEnvy: William Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)

Grady, Hugh, Shakespeare's Universal Wolf: Studies in Early Modern Reification (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)

Greene, Gayle, "Shakespeare's Cressida: 'A Kind of Self", in The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism ofShakespeare, ed. by C. Lenz, G. Greene and C. Neely (Chicago: Illinois University Press, 1980), pp. 133-149

Harris, Sharon, "Feminism and Shakespeare's Cressida: 'If I be false ... '", Women's Studies, 18 (1990), 65-82 161

Hodgdon, Barbara, "He Do Cressida in Different Voices", English Literary Renaissance, 20 (1990), 254-286

Homer, The Iliad, trans. by Robert Fagles, ed. by Bernard Knox (London: Penguin, 1990)

Jackson, Russell, "Shakespeare in Production", Shakespeare Quarterly, 48 (1997), 208-215

Jagendorf, Zvi, "All Against One in Troilus and Cressida", English, 31 (1982), 199-210

Kaufmann, R.J., "Ceremonies of Chaos: The Status of Troilus and Cressida", ELH, 32 (1965), 139-159

Kimbrough, Robert, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and its Setting (Cambridge Ms: Harvard University Press, 1964)

Kott, Jan, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (London: Methuen, 1965)

Lawrence, W.W., "Troilus, Cressida and Thersites", Modern Language Review, 37 (1942), 422-437

Leventhal, Melvyn R., "Cressida at the Tailhook Convention", Shakespeare Newsletter (Spring, 1997), 5 & 20

Lynch, Stephen J., "Shakespeare's Cressida: A Woman of Quick Sense", Philological Quarterly, 63 (1984), 357-367

__., "The Idealism of Shakespeare's Troilus", South Atlantic Review, 51 (1986), 19-29

Mann, Jill, "Shakespeare and Chaucer: What is Criseyde worth?", Cambridge Quarterly, 18 (1989), 109-128

Marsh, Derick R.C., "Interpretation and Misinterpretation: The Problem of Troi/us and Cressida", Shakespeare Studies, 1 (1965), 182-198

Martin, Priscilla, Shakespeare 's Troilus and Cressida: A Casebook (London: Macmillan, 197 6)

Newlin, Jeanne T., "The Modernity of Troilus and Cressida: The Case for Theatrical Criticism", Harvard Library Bulletin, 17 (1969), 353-373

__, "The Darkened Stage: J.P. Kemble and Troilus and Cressida", in The Triple Bond: Plays, Mainly Shakespearean, in Performance, ed. by Joseph G. Price (London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), pp. 190-202

Oates, Joyce Carol, The Edge ofImpossibility: Tragic Forms in Literature (London: Victor Gollancz, 1976)

O'Rourke, James, "Rule in Unity and Otherwise: Love and Sex in Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1992), 139-158 162

Okerlund, Arlene N., "In Defense of Cressida: Character as Metaphor", Women's Studies, 7 (1980), 1-17

Palmer, Angela Zambon, "Character Conceptions of Shakespeare's Cressida in Major Twentieth-Century Productions" (unpublished Masters thesis, University of Arizona, 1995)

Palmer, Kenneth, ed., Troilus and Cressida, 2nd Arden edn (London: Methuen, 1982)

Papp, Joseph, "Directing Troilus and Cressida", in The Festival Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida, ed. by Bernard Beckerman and Joseph Papp (New York: Macmillan 1967), pp. 23-72

Park, Yoon-hee, "Rewriting Woman Evil?: Antifeminism and its Hermeneutic Problems in Four Criseida Stories" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of North Texas, 1995)

Pauls, Vera, "Shakespeare's Cressida: From Object of Slander to Subject of Scrutiny" (unpublished Masters thesis, University of Manitoba, 1990)

Presson, Robert K., Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Legends of Troy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953)

Rollins, Hyder E., The Troilus-Cressida Story from Chaucer to Shakespeare (New York: Haskell House, 1972)

Rose, Mary Beth, The Expense ofSpirit: Love and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988)

Rutter, Carol, "Shakespeare, His Designers and the Politics of Costume: Handing Over Cressida's Glove", Essays in Theatre I Etudes theatrales, 12 (1994), 107-128

__, Enter the Body: Women and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage (London: Routledge, 2001)

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985)

Seltzer, Daniel, ed., Troilus and Cressida (New York: Signet, 1963)

Smallwood, Robert, "Shakespeare Performances in England", Shakespeare Survey, 50 (1997), 201-224

Spear, Gary, "Shakespeare's 'Manly' Parts: Masculinity and Effeminacy in Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 (1993), 409-422

Stanton, Kay, '"Made to Write "Whore" Upon?': Male and Female Use of the Word 'Whore' in Shakespeare's Canon", in A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, ed. by Dympna Callaghan (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 80-102 163

Taylor, Gary, "Troilus and Cressida: Bibliography, Performance and Interpretation", Shakespeare Studies, 15 (1982), 99-136

Taylor, George C., "Shakespeare's Attitude Towards Love and Honour in Troilus and Cressida", Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica, 45 (1930), 781-786

Tiffany, Grace, "Not Saying No: Female Self-Erasure in Troilus and Cressida", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 35 (1993), 44-56

Traub, Valerie, Desire and Anxiety: Circulations ofSexuality in Shakespearean Drama, (London: Routledge, 1992)

Tyllee, Claire, "The Text of Cressida and Every Ticklish Reader: Troilus and Cressida, the Greek Camp Scene", Shakespeare Survey, 41 (1989), 63-76

Voth, Grant L. and Oliver H. Evans, "Cressida and the World of the Play", Shakespeare Studies, 8 (1975), 231-239

Walker, Alice, ed., Troilus and Cressida (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957)

Wilders, John, The BBC TV Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida (London: BBC, 1981)

Willis, Susan, The BBC Shakespeare Plays: Making the Televised Canon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)

Yoder, R.A., "Sons and Daughters of the Game: An Essay on Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida", Shakespeare Survey, 25 (1972), 11-25 164

Newspaper Reviews of Productions: Troilus and Cressida

Times 14 July 1954

Theatre World 24 July 1954

Daily Telegraph 27 July 1960 W .A. Darlington

Times 27 July 1960

Punch 10 August 1960 Eric Keown

Financial Times 21 August 1960

Times 9 August 1968 Irving Wardle

Daily Telegraph 10 August 1968 W .A. Darlington

Times 19August 1976 Irving Wardle

Observer 12 July 1981 Robert Cushman

Financial Times 27 June 1985 Michael Coveney

Australian 31 March 1989 Sue Gough

Daily Sun 31 March 1989 John Harris

Daily Telegraph 17 March 1999 Charles Spencer

Express 20 March 1999 Robert Gore Langton

Sunday Times 21 March 1999 John Peter