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Measure For Measure on the Stage
Near the end of his well known treatment of transgression and surveillance in Measure for Measure, Jonathan Dollimore makes an observation about the world of the play that deserves further consideration by feminist scholars:
the prostitutes, the most exploited group in the society which the play represents, are absent from it. Virtually everything that happens presupposes them yet they have no voice, no presence. And those who speak for them do so as exploitatively as those who want to eliminate them. (85-86)
Although Dollimore's comment about the absence of the prostitutes holds true for the written text of the play, twentieth century theatrical productions of Measure for Measure have largely tended to fill this void by granting the prostitutes a concrete physical presence on the stage. It might be argued that, by giving this neglected and exploited female population a theatrical incarnation, a performance of the play draws attention to the plight of these women and thereby accomplishes some aspects of a feminist agenda. However, a detailed review of the recent Anglo-American stage history of Measure for Measure reveals that the specific way in which prostitutes are embodied and employed in a given production determines the extent to which the production constitutes a feminist appropriation of the text.
The treatment of prostitution in performances of Measure for Measure usually falls into one of three categories, which I will refer to as the conventional, lascivious, and adverse portrayals. A conventional presentation depicts the prostitutes as a generally ragged, vulgar, but appealing crew, the routine comic tarts of theatrical tradition, long-suffering but relatively untroubled in their lives of sexual debauchery. By contrast, a lascivious portrayal features an exhibition of the bodies of the prostitutes, offering the spectacle of their seductive sexuality for the consumption of audience members. Finally, an adverse treatment emphasizes the degrading and brutal aspects of the sex trade in an attempt to foreground the exploitation of women (and sometimes children) reduced to the bartering of their bodies by economic necessity. This adverse portrayal most nearly approaches a feminist appropriation of Measure for Measure, but it also tends to sacrifice the comic tone of the play's underworld. Can a feminist appropriation of Measure for Measure highlight the demeaning quality of prostitution without forfeiting the option of a comic interpretation of the lowlife of Vienna? This paper will address this question by concluding with a study of one particular production directed by a feminist, Joan Robbins of the University of Scranton, and her employment of prostitutes on stage at several key moments in the play's action.
Vogel’s writing exudes symbolism from the first word of the script to the last – from the rise of the curtain to its close. The glimpses into Li’l Bit’s past are sometimes explicitly and literally described, but Vogel also often uses extended metaphors to act as a detailed commentary on the action. Why, however, did the playwright choose symbolism to convey the effects of sexual abuse – as heavy as its subject matter may be – during the late twentieth century when seemingly nothing is censored in America? In order to answer this and better understand the way in which Vogel uses symbolism –in the smaller elements of the play and extended metaphors – the terms must first be defined.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, women’s and men’s roles were drastically different. It was believed that the woman’s place should be in the kitchen and the home while the man worked outside. This statement is false considering the fact that women not only worked inside, but they also assisted men outside. Men were respected and considered superior to women, while women were treated with discrimination and disrespect. The play Trifles, by Susan Glaspell is the perfect illustration of these gender differences, and women’s changing role in society.
Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing is, on the surface, a typical romantic comedy with a love-plot that ends in reconciliation and marriage. This surface level conformity to the conventions of the genre, however, conceals a deeper difference that sets Much Ado apart. Unlike Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies, Much Ado about Nothing does not mask class divisions by incorporating them into an idealized community. Instead of concealing or obscuring the problem of social status, the play brings it up explicitly through a minor but important character, Margaret, Hero’s “waiting gentlewoman.” Shakespeare suggests that Margaret is an embodiment of the realistic nature of social class. Despite her ambition, she is unable to move up in hierarchy due to her identity as a maid. Her status, foiling Hero’s rich, protected upbringing, reveals that characters in the play, as well as global citizens, are ultimately oppressed by social relations and social norms despite any ambition to get out.
...t happens and why the issues are ignored. I would present statistics of literary analyses that are relevant to feminist issues and draw a conclusion based on the data. Besides that, I would compare Onkey’s interpretation of the play with other critics’ interpretation and criticize them to strengthen Onkey’s point of view. In conclusion, Onkey’s disagreement about the lack of attention to women’s issues in most literary analyses especially of Brian Friel’s Translations is well grounded. Furthermore, I totally agree with her that Translations should not only be seen through the nationalistic point of view. Although it is obvious that British colonization of Ireland and cultural erosion inspire Friel to produce the play, the bigger theme in Translations appears to be the misinterpretation of woman as symbol of nation based on the magnitude and significance of the issue.
The stage performance of Chicago offered a spectacle that I expected before attending the show. I knew there was going to be scantly clad girls with dark makeup and saucy attitudes. The performers brought to life all that was raunchy in the entertainment business during the roaring twenties. The lifestyle in Chicago featured jazz, booze, sex and crime. More importantly, Chicago had beautiful, young women with the dream of having their own Vaudeville act. The two main female characters, Velma and Roxy were two such women hoping to capture the public's attention. The composition of the show is a metaphoric integration of Vaudeville type acts amongst the book scenes and diegetic musical numbers.
In this play, the men and women characters are separated even from their first entrance onto the stage. To the intuitive reader (or playgoer), the gender differences are immediately apparent when the men walk confidently into the room and over to the heater while the women timidly creep only through the door and stand huddled together. This separation between genders becomes more apparent when the characters proceed in investigating the murder. The men focus on means while the women focus on motive: action vs. emotion. While the men...
... comedies rather than tragedies in their source form the original characters from the source plays are revealed. Strong, ‘masculine’ women of the source are only revealed through the intertextuality of genre and the reassigned direct quotes from Shakespeare’s iconic plays. The feminist perspective of Shakespeare’s plays, which was there all along, could only be revealed by the strong use of intertextuality in MacDonald’s play. MacDonald relies on the iconic meta-theatre and intertextuality to magnify the feminist perspective within the Shakespearean plays. When turned in upon itself, Shakespeare’s plays reveal their distinct feminist perspective that could not be uncovered without the extensive and brilliant use of intertextuality such as that of Ann Marie MacDonald. Therefore the metatheatre’s intertextuality reinforces and supports the traits of the feminine.
During the Elizabethan era women had a status of subordination towards men. They had a role to marry and oblige to their husband’s wishes. Shakespearean literature, especially illustrates how a woman is psychologically and physically lesser to their male counterpart. The play, Othello, uses that aspect in many different ways. From a Feminist lens others are able to vividly examine how women were subjected to blatant inferiority. Being displayed as tools for men to abuse, women were characterized as possessions and submissive; only during the last portion of the play did the power of women take heed.
Donaldson, John William. The Theatre of the Greeks: A Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama. 8th. London: George Bell and Sons, 1879. 106-147. Print.
George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a feminist play that emphasizes the injustice and inequality towards women in society on a professional and informal aspect. Mrs. Warren’s Profession highlights the concept of iconoclasm while mocking the typical plot of a play from nineteenth century London. In doing so Shaw exposes the reader to a diverse and unprecedented point-of-view that focuses on the rocky relationship between a sentimental mother and her practical daughter.
Miss Julie by August Strindberg was published in 1888 yet was soon censored for it’s, what was then, ‘scandalous’ content with its frank portrayal of sexuality. In the preface of the play, Strindberg refers to Miss Julie as a ‘man-hating half women’ who seems to be the result of a power struggle between her mother and father. Miss Julie is already the dominating figure within the play showing a disregard for gender and class conventions, these themes and the idea of a power struggle that forms tension between characters should be drawn upon when taking a directorial approach to staging the play.
In Measure for Measure, Shakespeare’s dramatic interpretation of sexual harassment is empowered with having three gender-specific sub settings: the convent, the prison and the whorehouse. But, these locations are greatly uprooted by shifting to spaces pertaining to headline-grabbing sexual assaults that have come out in the last few decades. For the 2011 live production directed by Audrey Coldron and put on by Actor’s Community Theatre, they used Bradford Cathedral in Yorkshire as their backdrop. Meanwhile, the 2006 film version directed by Bob Komar uses a British Army base, but modernizes the three sub settings. By choosing to interpret the play in these contrasting locales, the “comedy” aspect of the problem comedy is taken away. Doing this
In Julio Cortazar’s Blow-Up and Other Stories, the short stories Letter to a Young Lady in Paris, Continuity of Parks and Blow-Up demonstrate the theme of concealing reality. Cortazar uses closely intertwined imagery and symbolism throughout his short stories to conceal the overall message. In Letter to a Young Lady in Paris there is the allusion to repression of the main character as he writes about his continual problem of vomiting bunnies and his eventual suicide. The story Continuity of Parks, a man reads a story and finds out that he is a part of a dramatic love affair and becomes murdered by the main character in the novel, demonstrating repressed sexual desire. In Blow-Up, Cortazar uses careful imagery of the scene to conceal a larger story between a young boy and an older woman photographed by a photographer. These three individual stories both demonstrate the theme of concealment through the usage of symbolism and imagery.
By placing an emphasis on the man who uses women as sex objects by titling her play after him; by having almost all the female characters in the play treated horribly, used, and manipulated; and having the female characters barely putting up a fight, Aphra Behn suggests the heavily patriarchic society that exists is too extensive and is dangerous for the women in it.
The socio-historic context of this play was at a time when there was a sexual reawakening after years of Puritan rule. This second `renaissance' of sex therefore made prostitution a reliable business for any woman who had not come from a well to do background. Angelica is not a common whore though; she in the play is a very beautiful and famous courtesan,