The Duke's final solution to all of the play's problem leaves me rather puzzled. It comes quite suddenly, and is a great surprise to both the audience and the characters. This is in itself really not so surprising, as many of Shakespeare's comedies end in a similarly deus ex machina fashion. What surprises me are the exact solutions the Duke comes up with, particularly regarding Lucio, Mistress Overdone, and Isabella.
When the Duke left he claimed he was leaving Angelo in charge so that he (Angelo) could enforce the laws which the Duke had let slide. He does so with a will, setting out to make a bloody example of Claudio in order to show that he had power and was willing to exercise it. By the end of the play the Duke decides things have gone too far, and steps in to set things right, as he sees it. However, some of the solutions he comes up with are arguably just as bad as what Angelo was trying to do.
He revokes Claudio's death sentence and allows him to marry Juliet, so jolly good there. However, he forces the rest of the characters into relationships they do not want. He condemns Lucio to a life of shame, unhappiness, and probably syphilis. He condemns Angelo (possibly the only one who deserved what he got) to a lifetime with a woman whom he had left and did not want back, and it was unclear whether or not she wanted him. Finally, while it never says in the script if Isabella actually marries the Duke, given his position and power it is highly likely.
All in all, the decisions he makes and presumably enforces might make Claudio and Juliet happy, but certainly nobody else is pleased. If his intention was to get the laws more strictly enforced, then that certainly is what happened, but he then turns the law around on his deputy who has done exactly what he was supposed to. If he eventually decided that Angelo had gone too far with his punishments and stepped in to stop them, it seems strange that he punished the rest of the characters while saving Claudio. It seems to me that he took the example Angelo set as ruler, which is pretty much universally accepted as a bad example, and continued it. If the Duke had any character development, it seems to have been for the worse.
4 comments:
What's interesting is that he put Angelo in power to enforce the laws so he wouldn't lose his popularity. Then, the Duke pulls a one-eighty and seizes power again to screw up everything Angelo tried to accomplish. I think society is actually worse off now that the Duke is back in power. I'm not saying Angelo is much better but at least he enforced the law (he's like Eliot Spitzer in that way). Then again, they're both pretty horrible rulers. One would rather pass off all responsibilities to another instead of dealing with his own problems, and the other wants to uphold the law for others, but not himself. Of course, I suppose it wouldn't be Shakespeare without a ridiculously flawed ruler (or two).
I also found it interesting that the Duke was essentially forcing marriage on people as a punishment, and I felt especially bad for the women. If I remember correctly, at least one of the women forced into a marriage wasn't even present when the punishment was given!
I like what you said about the Duke basically doing something worthy of Angelo when he forced the characters to get married. Also, I thought what you said was interesting in relation to our discussion on the Duke being a director of a play. He is controlling the lives of these characters and basically directing them who to marry and how to go on living their lives
Interesting, isn't it, to think that the Duke has "learned" from Angelo's example? I haven't thought of it this way, but Eric makes a good point here. After all, the reason the Duke brought in Angelo in the first place was because he himself had been an utter failure in enforcing the laws of Vienna. So maybe what he needed was an example to follow. This certainly puts an ironic twist on the idea that the Duke comes out looking better than Angelo. Maybe that's the brilliance of what he does--he gets to be an authoritarian ruler, while at the same time deceiving those around him?!
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