Shakespeare Reshaped: 1606-1623.

The Oxford Shakespeare, still in progress, includes the Complete Works and A Textual Companion (ed. Taylor, Jowett, S. Wells, and W. Montgomery, 1987) along with separately edited single plays (18 volumes since 1982 with more to follow). One original theory announced in the Complete Works is that Measure for Measure (written 1604, first published in the 1623 Folio) was revised by one or more alien hands. "Someone . . . perhaps Thomas Middleton . . . seems to have supplied a new, seedy Opening to Act I, Scene 2" (Works, 893) and made alterations in Acts III and IV. Two salient indicators alleged for such revision are (1) the Duke's short "O place and greatness" soliloquy in IV.1, said to be "far too short for it to be plausible that Isabella meanwhile explains her predicament to Mariana and persuades her to act as her substitute"; and (2) a "duplication" in I.2 where "the news of Claudio's imprisonment is given twice: first with Mistress Overdone as announcer, and then with Pompey advising a now ignorant Overdone" (Companion, 468). While it also takes up the introduction of act-intervals and the purgation of profanity in late-Jacobean plays, Shakespeare Reshaped is mainly addressed to establishing the case (promised in the Companion) for post-Shakespearean revision of Measure for Measure.

The difficulty imputed to the brevity of the Duke's soliloquy in IV.1 may owe more to the cobwebs of critical tradition than to any flaw in the text, since (as one may see in the BBC-TV production) it vanishes in performance. To less literal-minded readers, the time allowed for the Isabella-Mariana dialogue is no more troublesome than (for example) the brief dialogue among the conspiring nobles in Richard II II.1, where the several months between Richard's seizure of Gaunt's lands and Bolingbroke's return to reclaim them are elided into two minutes of stage time.

The Taylor-Jowett theory of revision in I.2 is unique. (Because Jowett deletes several lines from his text in the Complete Works, the references that follow are to the separate 1991 Oxford edition by N.W. Bawcutt.) Mistress Overdone informs Lucio that Claudio has been arrested and is to be beheaded (ll. 58-67). After Lucio exits and Pompey enters, Overdone asks Pompey, "What's the news with you?" and he replies, "Yonder man is carried to prison." Taylor and Jowett regard this later passage (ll. 83-91) as the original version by Shakespeare (although Claudio is not named and has not yet appeared on stage) and allege that the first section of the scene (ll. 1-82) was interpolated in 1621 - with the original dialogue (ll. 83-91) meant for deletion but somehow preserved and inadvertently printed in 1623. They further assert that "the only possible defence" of the text as printed would be to argue "that 'yonder man' is not Claudio" (151n.), although in fact many editors, including Bawcutt (72-73) and Mark Eccles (in his 1980 New Variorum edition, 28) provide reasonable alternatives.

The case for attributing I.2.1-82 to Middleton includes an extensive discussion of parallels between elements in the passage and elements in works to appear in the future Oxford edition of Middleton (186-231). Thus, "Shakespeare never elsewhere has 'speake feelingly' . . ., which occurs in More Dissemblers (1619). . . . Shakespeare never uses the phrase 'come . . . to composition' . . .; Middleton does, in Wisdom of Solomon (1597) . . ." (203), etc. The elaborate detailing of the arguments precludes brief summary, but a representative sample of their contents might be listed: "the probable use of Madam as a facetious title," "the phrase any language," "controuersie, used of religious or theological disputes," "the ironic use of Sanctimonious," "Thou shalt not steale," "I believe thee," "Behold, behold," and "as for example." Apart from finding Middletonian parallels within this episode, Taylor and Jowett detect hitherto unsuspected and quite astonishing new meanings: "The interpolated passage implies that Claudio is himself one of Overdone's customers" (233).

Complementing their case for the "new addition" to I.2, Taylor and Jowett describe what they believe was the earlier version completed by Shakespeare: "the [original] play gets off to a lighter, more clearly comic start," since "not until I.4 do we hear [at 1.66] that Claudio's 'life' has fallen 'into forfeit'" (233) - i.e., no previous reference to Claudio's being sentenced to death for fornication appeared before Middleton inserted it at I.2.67, so that when Claudio asks Lucio in I.2 to acquaint Isabella with "the danger of my state" (l. 177) and bid her appeal to Angelo, the penalty which she is to persuade Angelo to rescind must appear (in the original play) to be simply continuation of his imprisonment. But in the dialogue after Claudio's entry at line III (whose authenticity Taylor and Jowett do not question) Lucio shows himself to be quite aware of the death sentence when, addressing Claudio at line 188, he refers to "thy life, who I would be sorry should be thus foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." Lucio's awareness shows that the death sentence against Claudio must already have been known to the audience earlier in the scene, and this glaring contradiction of the Taylor-Jowett "wore clearly comic" reading renders their theory of a late interpolation deeply unconvincing.

Paul Bertram RUTGERS UNIVERSITY