Henry Oliver: evaluation

Transcript context

…Absolutely. I read Isabella more sympathetically than those critics. There are a lot of other critics, as well, who take Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well similarly. They’re appalled at the idea that this woman would force a man into marriage, and so they just can’t come to terms with her. Equally, a lot of people, I think, are appalled with Isabella going into the convent. I don’t think I can go along with this incest argument. I know what you mean. For me, it’s more of a fertility crisis play. There is a genuine question—I think Lucio voices it most loudly—but there’s a genuine question among them all that if we shut down the brothels, what will happen to the birth rate? It’s not obvious that that will work out well. Doesn’t Lucio even say, “Oh, I’ll be living in the best house on the main street for a penny because the market will collapse”? There’s a lot of other coinage imagery, and the relationship between the idea of stamping a coin as a metaphor for procreation, and the importance of demographics to sustaining the economy is, I think, quite well established. So, I read it more in the sense of Isabella feels like she’s being forced into the sex market, whether through marriage, whether through blackmail, whatever. Because of this, the state must have people. The state must have a population to exist. Going to the nunnery is her way of maintaining her principles and avoiding that. At the end, the Duke says, “Well, sorry, but if we’re shutting down the brothels and being good, you are going to have to get married and have babies because we don’t have another way out of the fertility crisis.” What we make of her, I think, is central to how we read Measure for Measure, no matter where we end up. There’s a passage early on, where she notes she’s entering the nunnery because she desires more restraint. Then someone mentions, “Are you, in fact, a virgin?” is the reference. He’s not saying she isn’t, but if all the sex and couplings are going on, we have to wonder how virtuous is she actually? And is she, in part, protecting against her own tendencies to go crazy? Then, in act 5, scene 1, there’s even a mention where she says—I’m not sure how literally to take this—that she did yield to Claudio, and I’m never sure what to make of that one sentence.…

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