Measure For Measure

As Claudio grapples with the temporary nature of his mortal life in prison, Vincentio’s interactions with Lucio and Escalus explore in parallel the issue of the unknown. While Vincentio counsels Claudio to disregard his mortal life as it will inevitably be only a temporary state, Claudio panics when he considers that he does not and cannot know the fate of his soul after death, causing him to ask Isabella to consider compromising her own soul by sleeping with Angelo.

In the subsequent scene of Act III, Vincentio comes to realize the greater ramifications of the unknown—that, like God, he is unknowable and mysterious, which is leading others to doubt his authority. While Vincentio may dislike being the subject of public attention, avoiding crowds when he departs from the city and operating in disguise or under the cover of darkness as he implements his plans, this act demonstrates his growing understanding that an open and public confrontation with vice is needed in Vienna.

In the first scene of Act III, Vincentio and Isabella both instruct Claudio to disregard his earthly existence and focus on the salvation of his soul. Their explanations are reasonable within the play’s Christian framework. Vincentio instructs Claudio:

Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,

Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death’s fool;

For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun

And yet runn’st toward him still (III.1.1228-1235).

His speech portrays death as inescapable, with Claudio running toward death even when he is trying to flee from it. However, despite this logical speech, Claudio still panics when he thinks of his impending execution and dishonors himself by begging his sister to give up her virginity. His moment of cowardice comes when he begins to consider the unknowable conditions of his afterlife—unsure as he is if he will go to hell. He reflects that:

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death (III.1.1364-1367).

Shakespeare depicts the wise and spiritual counsel of Vincentio and Isabella as reasonable and yet frustratingly ineffective because it cannot overcome the fear that results from uncertainty. Without knowledge of the afterlife, Claudio cannot rely on his Christian faith to comfort him.

Similarly, Vincentio’s interactions with Lucio and Escalus outside of the prison foreshadow how his concealed and secretive approach to solving Vienna’s moral problems has its drawbacks. While conversing with Lucio, Vincentio discovers that the young nobleman is casually slandering the Duke and accusing him of moral vices. Lucio comments that Duke Vincentio “yet would have dark deeds darkly answered; he would / never bring them to light: would he were returned!” (III.2.1684-1685). While Vincentio objects to Lucio’s accusations that the Duke was foolish and prone to drinking and lechery, this statement is ironically close to the truth. In arranging the bed trick with Mariana and Isabella, Vincentio is answering dark deeds with dark solutions, tricking Angelo in secret rather than publicly condemning him.

This irony plays into the larger theme of The Problem of Hypocrisy. A hypocrite condemns others for crimes he is guilty of because of a lack of self-awareness. When the disguised Vincentio asks Escalus what the duke‘s true nature was, the wise old counselor replies that he “contended / especially to know himself“ (III.2.1741-1742). While self-knowledge is Vincentio‘s greatest virtue that protects him from hypocrisy, he is unknowable to everyone else. Like the Abrahamic God, he operates in disguise, in secret, and through other agents. Only by the end of the play will he enact justice as himself, thereby resolving the confusion and uncertainty that might cause his subjects to lose faith in him.