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Isabella's "Speechless Dialect": Subversive Silence in Measure for Measure

Isabella's "Speechless Dialect": Subversive Silence in Measure for Measure Isabella's "Speechless Dialect": Subversive Silence in Measure for Measure There is a silence, overflowing with protest, at the conclusion of Measure for Measure, which has the potential for throwing the entire play and its place within the genre of comedy into chaos. 1 The Duke, demanding the hand of Isabella, calls for her to consent publicly with both gesture and voice to his proposal of marriage: "Give me your hand, and say you will be mine" (5.1.492).2 Having no lines either to accept or to refuse Vincentio's offer of marriage, Isabella can preserve the Duke's comedic ending by taking his hand. Yet such a directorial choice, I will argue, not only goes beyond the conventions of the seventeenth-century betrothal process but also occludes the significance of Isabella's final silence and the protest that it conveys. The hand holding ceremony, a public demonstration that symbolically announced the desires of the bride and groom to form a union, was an important stage in a long betrothal process: a series of steps, as Victoria Hayne has recently pointed out, that "grew ... more binding as each ritual step was completed" (4). Also integral to the process, as well as a step http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Explorations in Renaissance Culture Brill

Isabella's "Speechless Dialect": Subversive Silence in Measure for Measure

Spotswood, Jerald W.
Explorations in Renaissance Culture , Volume 20 (1): 107 – Dec 2, 1994
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Copyright 1994 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0098-2474
eISSN
2352-6963
DOI
10.1163/23526963-90000160
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Isabella's "Speechless Dialect": Subversive Silence in Measure for Measure There is a silence, overflowing with protest, at the conclusion of Measure for Measure, which has the potential for throwing the entire play and its place within the genre of comedy into chaos. 1 The Duke, demanding the hand of Isabella, calls for her to consent publicly with both gesture and voice to his proposal of marriage: "Give me your hand, and say you will be mine" (5.1.492).2 Having no lines either to accept or to refuse Vincentio's offer of marriage, Isabella can preserve the Duke's comedic ending by taking his hand. Yet such a directorial choice, I will argue, not only goes beyond the conventions of the seventeenth-century betrothal process but also occludes the significance of Isabella's final silence and the protest that it conveys. The hand holding ceremony, a public demonstration that symbolically announced the desires of the bride and groom to form a union, was an important stage in a long betrothal process: a series of steps, as Victoria Hayne has recently pointed out, that "grew ... more binding as each ritual step was completed" (4). Also integral to the process, as well as a step

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Explorations in Renaissance Culture – Brill

Published: Dec 2, 1994

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