Measure for Measure & Othello Acts One – “Good counsellors lack no clients…” & "Mere prattle without practise, is all soldiership."

Measure for Measure Act One – “Good counsellors lack no clients…” & Othello Act One - "Mere prattle without practise is mere soldiership"  ‘

I have decided for a change to read two Shakespeare plays together since Shakespeare wrote these plays at the same time, they were probably rehearsed at the same time and performed on the same bill.

The New Year of 1603 would not have been a happy and ceremonious occasion for Shakespeare and others who lived in London. After a relatively subdued party for her 69^th birthday on September 7^th in 1602, Queen Elizabeth started to be seen even less in public and everyone played the waiting game. She knew people wanted her to name a successor but she also knew that she had successfully played the political game of not naming an heir for a while now and this had worked for stability in her case. She knew that her cousin Arabella was popular but Arabella had annoyed Elizabeth on a number of occasions due to flippant statements and besides, Elizabeth knew that the Privy Council favoured a male heir. So although not publicly announced, her preferences swayed towards James VI of Scotland who was already a monarch and a fortuitously for Elizabeth and England, a Protestant. The weather deteriorated further in January 1603 and Queen Elizabeth’s health and will to live took a further blow when the last of her close friends and confidante’s Catherine Howard (Countess of Nottingham) died in February. Elizabeth fell into "settled and unremovable melancholy" and was moved to Richmond Palace early in March 1603 and so the waiting game began.

The events surrounding the ‘melancholy’ of Queen Elizabeth I, the questions of succession and the cold and wet weather meant that William Shakespeare probably was stuck in London for most of January, February and early March of 1603. He spent much of his time reading and buying manuscripts which he found in the market place but uncertainty about Queen Elizabeth and whether the theatre would open in May, meant that this was a lean time for Shakespeare. Sometime in early March of 1603, he may have re-read through Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ to help with writing 'Measure for Measure'. 

‘Hecatommithi' is a set of tales framed within the story of Roman fugitives escaping by sea who sit down every couple of nights at different ports and tell stories. These stories within the main story each have a theme (normally one for each night of the storytelling) and there is a sense that by telling the stories that the fugitives achieve some redemption. The story of Epitia which involves a corrupt magistrate who, when the wife of man who is to be executed gives up her body to the him, sleeps with the woman and then kills her husband anyway, must have been seen to have some dramatic legs for Shakespeare. He probably saw the potential in this story even though in its original form it lacks a sense of character and purpose.
As the waiting game continued as Elizabeth I’s health deteriorated further, Shakespeare probably turned to older plays by English playwrights. It was probably out of frustration that he burnt the candle late one night reading Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ for another time. Shakespeare had probably seen Whetstone’s play when he was young or maybe even acted in it as a young actor some 13 years earlier. The comic sub-plot of the play and the character of Mistress Overdone who runs a brothel would have been seen to have dramatic potential for Shakespeare. What probably troubled him about the main plot of the play was that Cassandra marries Promos, the murderer of her brother. Shakespeare saw that he needed a very clever and subtle handling of the main tragic plot but he probably was also fascinated with putting a tragic plot with high and bawdy comedy (a idea that had worked with the character of Falstaff). With Falstaff it had worked because the story of Henry V was so well known and the comedy helped to move along the narrative of history plays but Shakespeare probably mused over whether it could work with a tragedy or even dominate the tragic events. 

Around the same time, he was preparing to write a tragedy which starts in Venice. This was the first play which Shakespeare wrote which was set in Venice. It is a city that he would return to years later in 'The Merchant of Venice'. Shakespeare probably took the character from Giovanni's Battista's Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi where it is mentioned in the tale 'Un Capitano Moro'. The character also probably owes much to a tradition with commedia troupes travelling around Europe who sometimes visited London who would make the Il Capitiano character into a moor. However, prompted by the dire health of Queen Elizabeth I and an alleged bet with actor Richard Burbage whereby Shakespeare would win the bet if he could write a great tragic part that Burbage would find impossible to play, Shakespeare turned the character into a complex tragic figure who is noble and brought down by jealousy. But Shakespeare's musings and initial writings came to a halt when on March 24th 1603, the bells rang out over London.

Through much of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I had refused to see doctors and even members of her Privy Council. She even refused to take to her bed and would stand for hours looking out the window of Richmond Palace. It is said that her servants even made a day bed for her on the floor of one of the rooms. Then on March 23rd she was finally taken to her bed and early in the morning of March 24th depending on your sources she either spoke to Lord Robert Cecil in whispered tones on her death bed and "...mildly like a lamb" and "easily like a ripe apple from the tree..." and said “I will that a king succeed me and who but my kinsman the king of Scots.” Or if you follow the other common scenario, Elizabeth, being unable to verbally reply to the question should James VI of Scotland succeed her, she simply nodded  and gestured a circle crown on a head. Even as her body was still warm, a rider was dispatched to Scotland and to London (since relay riders would have been set in place days if not weeks before). Later on the day of her death, Cecil and the Privy Council announced James VI of Scotland as her successor. A torch and candle lit barge was arranged and Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall. On 28 April, her coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey and she was interred with her half-sister, Mary with the inscription "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis" ("Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection") written on the tomb.

By early May, Shakespeare was being pressured to have at least two new plays ready for late May to open the Globe Theatre’s 1603 season. He had probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £250 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays. With parades in the streets on May 7^th when James arrived in London in preparation for his July coronation, Shakespeare knew he needed something new for a new age for his play and the main topic of conversation on the street seemed to be questions of what sort of ruler James VI of Scotland (soon to be crowned James I of England) would be. Time was running out when Shakespeare probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which he called ‘Measure for Measure’. He probably had started rehearsals on 'Measure for Measure' while still trying to nut out the more difficult 'Othello'.

'Measure for Measure' opens when Lord Angelo is summoned by the Duke and appointed in charge of Vienna while the Duke will go on a long trip. Angelo who comes across as earnest and almost austere initially refuses but the Duke is insistent. We then move slightly forward in time to the talk in the street where gentlemen (who are also ex-military men) show disapproval of the peace accord which the Duke has recently struck. The conversation deteriorates to talk venereal disease when Mistress Overdone (the owner of a local brothel) enters and tells them of how one of Angelo’s first acts as leader has been to tighten up on law and moral enforcement as shown by his imprisonment of a young man called Claudio who has been locked up and sentenced to death for getting his young female love Juliet pregnant. Lucio and the Gentlemen exit to discovery more about the whole matter.

Pompey the clown enters and confirms that Claudio has been imprisoned for lechery but he tells Mistress Overdone of the more shocking news that Angelo has made a proclamation which will shut down all of the brothels in part of the city. Mistress Overdone seems distressed about what this means for her business but Pompey claims that their will always be customers for her profession.

Claudio enters and he asks the provost why he has been arrested and the provost replies that he is only following Lord Angelo’s orders. Lucio asks Claudio what offense he committed that deserves the death penalty and when he hears that it is not murder but lechery Lucio is surprised at the penalty and asks, "Is lechery so looked after?"

Claudio explains that he admits to sleeping with Juliet and that it was consensual and that they intended to get married soon but were waiting for a good time to announce their engagement. It seems that their activities are part of Lord Angelo’s larger clamp down on illegal premarital sexual activity. Claudio expresses the view that he thinks that Lord Angelo is only trying to show strength at the beginning of his rule to seem strong. Lucio insists that Claudio appeal directly to the Duke but Claudio reveals that no-one seems to know where the Duke is. He asks Lucio to go to the nunnery to find Isabella, his sister (who has just joined the nunnery as a novice), to appeal directly to Angelo for clemency and his life.

We cross to the local monastery where the Duke asks Friar Thomas to hide him since his lie about a trip is only the premise for him seeing how Angelo will govern since as the Duke explains, for the past fourteen years everyone in Vienna seems to ignore the rules and undermine his authority. The Duke claims since he gave the people some freedoms, he doesn’t feel he can be strict. The Duke asks Friar Thomas to hide and disguise him as a monk so he can observe what happens when Angelo enacts the letter of the law.

The scene switches to Claudio’s sister Isabella as she is having the laws of the nunnery explained to her. Lucio arrives at the door and Isabella is allowed to speak to him since she has not taken her vows yet. Lucio explains how her brother has got a girl called Juliet pregnant and he further reveals that since the Duke has left Angelo is in charge and Angelo is intent on following the law to the letter, Angelo means to make an example of Claudio by executing him. Isabella is distressed and asks how she can help, and Lucio suggests that she visits Angelo and pleads on her brother’s behalf using her womanly charms.  

“Go to Lord Angelo,

And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,

Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.”

About two days after starting 'Measure for Measure' rehearsals, Shakespeare probably gave actors the first scenes of his masterpiece 'Othello'. Burbage would have been both excited and cautious when the leaf pages of Act One were put in his hand. Shakespeare probably gave him a possible way out of the bet by creating such a strong other main character in Iago.

The play opens with an argument on the streets of Venice where Roderigo who has sort Iago's help to win Desdemona hears that Othello (a general of Moorish descent) has just eloped with her. Iago assures Roderigo that he hates Othello mainly because Othello has overlooked him for a promotion. He explains to Roderigo that although he seems to following Othello that he is doing it only as means to an end:
In following him I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love or duty.
But seeming so for my peculiar end."

After this Iago encourages Roderigo to awaken Desdemona's father (Brabantio) to tell him of Desdemona's marriage to Othello. Angry at the news, Brabantion looks for Othello and eventually finds him and accuses him of using evil powers to bewitch Desdemona. Othello defends himself in front of the Duke of Venice and Brabantio saying:
"She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them." (Act 1 Sc 3)

The Prince and the Senate is moved by Othello's words and accepts the marriage and love as legitimate. Brabantio storms out stating that Desdemona will leave Othello eventually:
"Look to her. Moor, if though has eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee."

The Prince moves onto the pressing matters of the recent news of the impending attack of Cyprus by the Turks. Othello is put in charge of the troops which will defend Cyprus and he takes with him Desdemona, Cassio (his new lieutenant), Iago and Iago's wife Emilia (as an attendant for Desdemona). 

As Act One of Othello ends, Iago reveals the depth of his deception and treachery to the audience:
"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse,
For I mine own gained knowledge should profane
If I would time expend with such a snipe
But for my sport and profit... let me see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery - How, how? Let's see -

After some time, to abuse Othello's ear
That he (Cassio) is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
To be suspected, framed to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose 
As asses are.
I have't. It is engender'd. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to world's light."