The Ending of Measure for Measure: Terrible or Acceptable?

Measure for Measure at the Globe was highly dramatized, with the actors playing up any part of the play that they could for humor, which was fantastic. At the end of the play, when the Duke professes his love, in a way, and asks Isabella to marry him, she acts outlandishly surprised and has to sit down, presumably from shock. At the very end of the play, after all of the written lines are finished, the director did not choose to add more lines in order to solidify whether Isabella said yes or no, but rather chooses an arguably odd way to end a 16^th century play: with a dance routine. It truly seemed out of place because there had been no other dancing throughout the play, and characters who should not have been smiling at the end of this problem play broke character and were smiling. The fact that Isabella stands up and offers her hand to the Duke, after which they caress each other’s faces, leaves the audience with the impression that she accepted his offer (though whether it was an offer or a command is still up for debate). Subjectively, I dislike this ending, as I would have disliked it if Shakespeare had written it himself. I like Isabella and the Duke as characters, and the main reason that I like Isabella is because she is a strong female character, and I don’t think she deserved what happened to her in the play. She wanted to be a nun, which, while I can’t relate to it, is her choice. She did not have to offer anyone her body to save anyone for any reason, but she did, or at least implied it, though with a heavy conscience (Act II, Scene II). The fact that she is able to save her brother but keep her virginity is the one main reason why I was in favor of the bed trick. So for her to choose not to have sex with someone, even though it would have saved her brother, because she wants to be a nun and in order to be a nun, one must be a virgin, is perfectly acceptable in my opinion. However, for her to stand by her morals the entire play, at the expense of her brother’s life, only to give up her life at the convent in favor of marrying the Duke is absolutely not okay with me. It simply does not flow with the rest of the play or with Isabella’s intentions.

Looking at the Globe’s ending objectively, I was watching the dance trying to find symbolism hidden in the placement of the characters and what they were doing. I expected them to have been staged with “sinners” on one side and “saints” on the other. However, even the placement of which characters into the “saints” category, besides Isabella, is up for debate. Overlooking the fact that they are dancing together, Isabella and the Duke are on different sides of the stage, with Claudio and Juliet on Isabella’s side, which I saw fit as I would not classify them as sinners as much as I would, in the context of the play at least, Lucio, who was on the Duke’s side. And while I know that the staging of the dance was for balance, one side would do one thing with their arms while the other side would do it to the opposite direction; I thought that it could have also been done in an attempt to show how different, and perhaps even opposing, the Duke and Isabella’s union would be (especially with Juliet and Claudio being on the same side as each other and even Angelo and Mariana being on the same side). This is backed up even more by the idea that if what Lucio says is true, and the Duke does frequent the brothels, which Isabella would obviously not support, then it does not seem as if the two are a likely pair or if Isabella would even be happy with the Duke (Act III, Scene II).

In the written play, the Duke does say to Isabella that he has “a motion much imports [her] good/whereto if [she’ll] a willing ear incline/what’s [his] is [hers] and what is [hers] is [his]/so, bring [them] to [their] palace, where [they’ll] show/what’s yet behind, that’s meet you all should know,” which does imply that she doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter (Act V, Scene I). However, given her strong will throughout the play, it would make sense for her to argue. At the very least, I think the director could have given more of an explanation that a dance routine.