QlorneU Ittiocrditg Cibrarg Stlfata, Sfejn ^ork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Library Cornell University A1 1922 443 3 1924 012 960 P^TE DUE DDNUU995 GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012960443 THE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE EDITED FOR THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH AND JOHN DOVER WILSON MEASURE FOR MEASURE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON ; FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY CALCUTTA MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS ) TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED x-lker-:jt^uru-'iHa'iit-ii"i -j S^^i j7o- MEASURE FOR MEASURE CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS I Q22 A^ ) \\^\\%\o% CONTENTS BEN JONSON FRONTISPIECE INTRODUCTION PAGE vii TO THE READER xliv MEASURE FOR MEASURE I THE COPY FOR THE TEXT OF 1623 97 NOTES 115 TIME-ANALYSIS 157 THE STAGE-HISTORY 160 GLOSSARY 166 THE FRONTISPIECE IS REPRODUCED FROM THE PORTRAIT, AFTER HONTHORST, IN THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY. JONSOn's masque of blackness is referred TO IN THIS PLAY (see pp. 1 01-3) : MEASURE FOR MEASURE I We have no reason to suppose that Measure for Measure ever savs^ print until it appeared in the 1623 Folio which gives us our text. Most critics agree, how- ever, that in some form or other it dates from twenty years earlier, and accept the entry of the Revels Accounts (confirming a note among Malone's papers in the Bodleian Library) that it was performed at Court be- 604I. fore King James I on December 26, 1 In our note on the Copy (pp. 101-3) we oiFer some new evidence supporting this date. The source of the plot stands even less in dispute. It derives originally from Italy, where Giraldi Cinthio (d. 1573) had told the tale in a tragedy, Epitia, and repeated it in a collection of prose tales, Hecatommjthii, published inSicily in 1565. In 1 578 George Whetstone, working apparently on the prose version, Englished it into a double play, entitled^: The Right Excellent and Famous History of Promos | | and Cassandra; divided into two Comical Discourses. In | [ the first part is shown, the unsufFerable abuse of a lewd | Magistrate, I the virtuous behaviour of a chaste Lady: the | uncontrolled lewdness of a favoured Courtesan, and the | undeserved estimadon of a pernicious Parasite. In the | second part is discoursed the perfect magnanimity of a | noble King in checking Vice and favouring Virtue : | | ^ The entry runs St By his Ma'" \ On Sduens Night in the I „, , , ^'"^'>^'''*- plaiers \ Hall A Play cald Mefur for Mefur \ ^ The curious reader may consult Collier's and W. Carew Hazlitt's several reconstructions of Shakespeare's Library. Nichols reprinted Whetstone's play in 1779. So far as is known it was never acted. : ; viii MEASURE FOR MEASURE wherein is shown the Ruin and Overthrow of dishonest | practices, with the advancement of upright dealing. | To his play Whetstone prefixed a brief 'Argument of the Whole Historye'; and again, in 1582, he pub- lished in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses a prose version of the tale—in v^hich he must evidently have found a fund of enjoyment. We confess to inheriting a very small share in this: but holding as we do that the true difficulty of Measure for Measure is an aesthetic one—yet not excluding thereby the pleasure we all take in recognising right moral judgment—we shall give from Whetstone a bare sketch, of Promos and Cassandra, with an addition or two where his 'argument' omits a detail relevant to our play. We shall thus see what Shakespeare (and others ?) had, or chose, to work upon. In the Cyttie of Julio (sometimes vnder the dominion of Coruinus, King of Hungarie and Boemia) there was a law that what man so euer committed Adultery [sc. fornication] should lose his head, and the woman offender should weare some disguised Apparell during her life, to make her in- famouslye noted. This seuere law by the fauour of some mercifull magistrate became little regarded, vntil the time of Lord Promos auctority: who conuicting a young Gentle- man named Andrugio of incontinency, condemned both him and his minion to the execution of this statute. Andrugio had a very vertuous and beawtiful Gendewoman to his Sister, named Cassandra ; Cassandra to enlarge her brother's life, submitted an humble petition to the Lord Promos.... Here be it noted that Andrugio's offence, like Claudio's (cf. i. 2. 141-151), was committed in love, not in lechery. Cassandra can plead Way [weigh] his yong yeares, the force of loue which forced his amis, Way, way that marriage works amends for what committed is. He hath defilde no nuptiall bed, nor forced rape hath moued He fel through loue who neuer ment but wiue the wight he loued. INTRODUCTION ix To continue: Promos regarding her good behauiours, and fantasj^ing her great beawtie, was much delighted with the sweete order of her talke; and doing good, that euill might come thereof: for a time he repryued her brother; but wicked man, tourning his liking into vnlawfull lust, he set downe the spoile of her honour raunsome for her Brothers life : chaste Cassandra, abhorring both him and his sute, by no per- suasion would yeald to this raunsome. But in fine, wonne with the importunitye of hir Brother (pleading for life) vpon these conditions she agreede to Promos. First that he should pardon her brother, and after marry her. Promos, as fearless in promise as carelesse in performance, with solemne vowe sygned her conditions: but worse than any Infydel, his will satisfyed, he performed neither the one nor the other : for to keepe his aucthoritye vnspotted with fauour, and to preuent Cassandraes clamours, he commanded the Gayler secretly to present Cassandra with her brothers head^. The Gayler, with the outcryes of Andrugio, abhorry- ing Promos lewdenes, by the prouidence of God prouyded thus for his safety. He presented Cassandra with a Felons head newly executed, who (being mangled, knew it not from her brothers, by the Gayler who was set at libertie)^ was so agreeued at this trecherye that at the pointe to kyl her selfe she spared that stroke to be auenged of Promos. And devisying a way, she concluded, to make her fortunes knowne vnto the kinge. She (executinge this resolution) was so highly fauoured of the king that forthwith he hasted to do justice on Promos, whose judgment was to marrye Cassandra, to repaire her erased Honour: which donne, for his hainous offence he should lose his head. This marriage solempnized, Cassandra, tyed in the greatest bondes of affection to her husband, became an earnest sutor for his life: the Kinge (tendringe the general! benefit of the common weale before her speciall case, although he favoured her much) would not graunt her sute. Andrugio (disguised amonge the company) sorrowing the griefe of his sister, bewrayde his safetie, and craued pardon^. The Kinge, to 1 A barbarity softened in Measure for Measure. ^ The 'Gayler,' merciful as the Provost in Measure for Measure, looses Andrugio: who, hiding in a wood in out- X MEASURE FOR MEASURE renowne the vertues of Cassandra, pardoned both him and Promos. The circumstances of this rare Historye in action lyvelye foloweth. II Here, then, we have all—or almost all—of the plot of Measure for Measure: in what Pater calls 'one of that numerous class of Italian stories.like Boccaccio's Tancred of Salerno, in which the mere energy of southern passion has everything its own way, and which, though they may repel many a northern reader by a certain crudity in their colouring, seem to have been fuU of fascination for the Elizabethan age.' Now Pater had a superlative gift of sympathy with old and beautiful work in all the arts, and specially with old and beautiful Italianate work. It may have been most at home in Renaissance Italy: but it reached forward, and it reached back also—through Giotto and Cimabue, across the 'dark ages,' to the Pervigilium Veneris, and yet farther back to the primitive 'religion of Numa' which he pictures for us in Marius as still, in the age of the Antonines, keeping its rural ritual ' beating the bounds,' worshipping the Lar and breathing household laws in and around a quiet Etrurian manor. So when Pate^ talks of Whetstone's translation of Cinthio's story as 'a genuine piece, with touches of undesigned poetry, a quaint field-flower here and there of diction or senti- ment, the whole strung up to an effective brevity, and with the fragrance of that admirable age of literature all about it,' we accept this appreciation on the word of a critic who recognised the Italian spirit wherever, and in what guise soever, he met it. But we are concerned lawry, learns from a peasant that Promos having been married to his sister has been condemned to the further expia- tion of dying for his death, returns to the city, and risks declaring himself alive. In our play Claudio is given no such chance to rehabilitate his character by his courage. INTRODUCTION xi here with Shakespeare: and Shakespeare's feeling for Italy was not diffuse like Pater's and genially polite ; but sharply practical rather, and concentrated upon a phase, a period, a passing hour, the Renaissance: an interest infinitely less learned than Pater's yet infinitely livelier, Italy being for him and his contemporaries almost the breath of their nostrils.