Are excessive desires ever effectively repressed or contained in early modern literary texts?
...tructed Measure for Measure is perhaps one facet of the cause behind the play’s theme of the repression and constraint of desire; a facet that can be linked to the same theme in much of early modern literature. The attempted restraint placed upon their baser desirers by many of the characters in Measure for Measure, most notably the Duke, Angelo and Isabella, and Angelo’s submission to them, is a direct reflection of the concept of Original Sin. The temptation of the apple to Adam and Eve, and Eve’s eventual surrender to her desire, is the cause of the fall of man and his banishment from the Garden of Eden. It’s sexual connotations are also made clear in the verse after they have eaten of the forbidden fruit, ‘And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons’ (my italic). Thus we see the importance of the theme of the repression of desire in early modern literature; an extension of the church’s influence and commands upon the society of the Renaissance. Indeed, in Measure for Measure, characters seem to assume that their virtue, their morality, is intrinsically bound up with their chastity. As the Duke brags to the Friar, ‘Believe not that the dribbling dart of love can pierce a complete bosom’. This conjunction of restraint or suppression with the concept of morality and living a correct or ‘God-favoured’ life is so strong that it forms the central dilemma of the plot: Isabella believes that having sexual intercourse with Angelo will despoil her forever, even to the extent that she is unwilling to do so even to save the life of her brother Claudio, ‘Better it were a brother died at once than a sister, by redeeming him, should die forever’. As Katharine Eisaman Maus points out, the particular emphasis placed upon the troubling nature of sexuality in Measure for Measure is somewhat unusual when compared to Shakespeare’s other plays. Whilst this is a necessary reflection of the central sexual quandary of the plot, Katharine Eisaman Maus goes on to pin point another religiously enforced difference, ‘In Shakespeare’s earlier, more optimistic comedies, the prospect of heterosexual consummation usually seems automatically to entail marriage, so that the weddings with which the plays conclude seem to follow spontaneously from the eroticism that fuels the plot…in Measure for Measure, however, the link between heterosexual desire and marriage seems to have snapped’. Evidence for Katharine Eisaman Maus assertion can be seen through out the play, not only in Angelo’s forbidden lust, but also in the crime of Claudio and the aboundment of prostitutes and libertines, such as Lucio and Mistress Overdone. Thus we see that the morality or otherwise of capitulation to the sexual desires is intrinsically linked with the religious subtext that it holds; without the overwhelming influence of the church and the Christian faith in this period of history, would the central dilemma of this play have actually attracted an audience? If this story was put in a present day setting, would the character of Isabella actually be concerned about the state of her immortal soul if she allowed such an advance, or would she be more concerned with the illegality, sexism and offensiveness of Angelo’s actions? Or indeed, would she be more worried about the sum of money involved when she sold the story to Jerry Springer? However, it cannot be argued that the Church’s influence on the society of the Renaissance is an integral part of Measure for Measure. The play is to a certain degree an actual reflection of events taking place at the time; the rise of Puritanism and in particular an individual group of puritans known as the ‘Precisians’ in the late sixteenth century to the early seventeenth century, argued that the church courts punishments for sexual misdemeanours were not strong enough , apparently the threat of excommunication and disgrace within their own community was not enough to deter serial offenders , so these puritans went as far as to call for the death penalty for the worst of the sexual crimes – a reality that is mimicked perfectly by the death sentence passed on Claudio. Surely this points towards the concept that excessive desires, particularly those of a sexual nature, were not effectively restrained or contained in the actual society of the early modern period; a proposal that would seem to both suggest and explain the failure of this self-discipline and control within the literature of the early modern period. The character of Angelo in Measure for Measure, as Katharine Eisaman Maus suggests, displays the almost ‘Catch 22’ situation engendered by the restraint of the more excessive emotions and desires, ‘…that the habits of restraint can themselves provoke sexual excitement’. The restraint that the church of t...