MARRIAGE

MARRIAGE

1. Measure for Measure

   • Claudio says he went to bed with Juliet and explains why "she is my fast wife/save that and we do some denunciation/ lack of outward order"
     • What does this mean? Some critics think that C+J have made a marriage contract but haven't had a religious ceremony (required by the church) to seal it
   • In C17th England, a marriage contract was considered legal under common law if the bride and groom got together in front of witnesses and said 'I marry you' Whether what C+J did was legal remains unclear (shakespeare intended this)
   • 'Dowry' = money or goods brought to the marriage by the wife, became husband's once married
     • Mariana ditched by Angelo after she lost her dowry (brother died) but was willing to participate in the 'Bed trick'
       • 'Bed trick' = common term for one of Shakespeare's favourite plot devices: always involves one person who thinks he/she is going to bed with another person, but who is tricked into sleeping with someone else. Duped party is usually a guy, like Betram in 'All's well that ends well"
         • Duke: "Your honour untainted, the poor Mariana advantaged and the corrupt deputy scaled"
         • Duke says Mariana's actions won't be classed as a sin because Angelo is her husband 'on a pre contract' meaning they were formally betrothed before
   • MARRIAGE AS A SOLUTION
     • Ties up loose ends: Lucio + Kate, Duke + isabella (silence) , Angelo + Mariana, Claudio + Juliet
     • ALTERNATIVE TO MARRIAGE
       • Convent represents alternative form of sexual policing in which women are forbidden from interacting with men "but in the presence of the prioress"
         • Whetstone's 'Promos and Cassandra' (source) the Isabella figure is not a nun, and in making her a nun Shakespeare is able to explore a greater range of sexual attitudes and social possibilities for women
       • Also presents the sexual licentiousness of brothels. Prostitution can be viewed as corrupt and diseased and is consistently under attack, however Mistress Overdone is a sympathetic character and the attempts to police sexuality ends up seeming hypocritical.
       • MARRIAGE AS PUNISHMENT
         • Lucio likening marriage to "pressing to death"
           • Duke intends it as a punishment "Upon my honour thou shalt marry her"
             • Angelo is punished by marriage, even if this means honouring a contract. His last lines: "That I craved death more willing than mercy" Like Lucio, wishes for death instead
               • Reading Isabella's silence: no evidence of how she responds = wide range of performance possibilities. Duke like Angelo propositioning a novice nun
           • C+J also arguably punished by marriage, unlike L+A they freely consent and were pre-contracted however they are also forced to marry and neither speaks in the final scene with C entering "muffled"
   • PRE CONTRACTS
     • Play hinges upon 2 pre- contracts: Angelo + Mariana , Claudio + Juliet
       • C+J secretly engaged in ' de praesenti' but not married "save that we do denunciation lack of of outward order" (Arrangement lacks "outward order" and yet it is made visible by the outward signs of J's pregnancy/
         • A+M apparently had 'de futuro' agreement which was broken off by Angelo for economic reasons: "her marriage dowry, with both, her combinate husband, this well seeming Angelo"
     • PC's were a form of engagement. Often wedding like vows would be sworn by two parties but they would no be consecrated the same way as marriage. Richard Greenham: "although it be a degree under marriage yet it is more than a determined promise, yea more than a simple promise" (A Treatise of contract 1599)
       • Ambiguities of contracts not resolved until the 1752 marriage bill which meant only a church wedding was legallly binding
     • TWO KINDS OF CONTRACT: de praesenti = almost full force marriage though not legally man and wife/ de futuro = more conditional and could be broken off by mutual consent although made binding by sex. In theory relatively straight forward in practice highly contentious.
     • PRE CONTRACT PROBLEMS
       • PC's blurring boundaries between the social, legal and religiously consecrated
       • Create problems of identification. C+J left in a limbo that makes possible C's incarceration/ death and J's shaming
       • Duke to J: "Repent you, fair one, for the sin you carry?" And he calls their fornication " the most offenseful act"
         • Causes problems for women: Duke "Why you are nothing then: neither maid, widow nor wife?" (to Mariana) Women placed in categories: widow, maid, wife and prostitute
       • Marriage used to police sexuality: only socially legitimate form of intercourse. PC dilemma's expose a policing which is going on
   • CONCLUSIONS:
     • Marriage shown as form of sexual control/regulation
       • Some marriages born of love, but mostly convienience or punishment
         • Measure for Measure: Shakespeare offering one of his darkest and most ambigious renderings of the subject
       • Shakespeare's plays often playing around with received ideas of marriage e.d unaccompanied figures like Malvolio in Twelfth Night
   • CONTEXT
     • Considered a dark comedy for cynicism and bitterness
       • Raises important moral issues: structure of play built around identities and manipulation
         • Measure for Measure can also be called a problem play, because it brings up a difficulty and then seeks to solve it. However, the difficulty lies in misunderstandings and hidden identities, not in the real moral questions of the play. No character comes to reconsider his or her beliefs about freedom, justice, sexual relationships, or morality.
         • SOURCE: Promos and Cassandra (witch is sourced from Cinthio) Whetstone added comic elements and the bed trick

2. OEDIPUS THE KING

   • MARRIAGE AS POLLUTION AND SIN
     • Oedipus is cursed by the Gods before he was born with a prophecy that he kills his father and marries his mother
       • Does this and becomes King of Thebes
       • (MARRIAGE = SIN PATRICIDE = SIN) = POLLUTION
         • Oedipus' pollution causes a terrible plague to fall over Thebes "the plague, the fiery god of fever hurls down on the city"
     • Children are the fruits of a sinful marriage, therefore are cursed. Antigone hangs herself and sons die "Your doom is clear: you'll wither away to nothing, single, without a child
       • Causes Oedipus to blind himself/banished from Thebes "he digs them down the sockets of his eyes crying 'You', you'll see no more of the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused!'"
         • " Take me away, far, far from Thebes"
       • Oedipus and family are punished as a result of the patricide and marriage. Somewhat complicated as Oedipus was cursed to marry his mother before he was born
   • CONTEXT
     • 3 plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone mistaken for a trilogy when not written to be performed together or in chronological order. Antigone written first (comes last chronologically)
       • Plays weren't compared in Sophocles' time as they were rarely if ever revived during his life.
     • World wide influence, most notable inspiration for Sigmund Freud's Oedipus Complex