"Give me your hand and say you will be mine": Containing Catholicism in Thomas Middleton's Measure for Measure

Abstract:This essay posits a reading of Measure for Measure which hinges upon John Jowett's argument that "the 1623 text," the earliest extant text, "had undergone adaptation by Middleton." Specifically, I argue that by considering the play in the context of Middleton's revisions and the historical moment specific to those revisions (when the Hungarian prince Bethlen Gabor was attempting to negotiate a peace with the Holy Roman Empire), we might read Measure for Measure as an anti-Catholic allegory in which the novice nun Isabella is, through her imposed marriage to the Duke, removed from the structures of feminine resistance (the convent and the larger Catholic church) and forcibly reintegrated into a patriarchal, heteronormative, and implicitly Protestant social economy. Given the character's close association with the Catholic Church (she, the nun Francisca, and the friar Peter are the only representatives of actual, as opposed to fraudulent, Catholic clergy in the comedy), her marriage might also read as a timely allegorical containment, and punishment, of Roman Catholicism. Such a reading may prove productive in that it allows for a fresh consideration of one of the most problematic aspects of this notoriously problematic play, specifically the character of Isabella, whose enigmatic silence in response to the Duke's proposal of marriage in the final scene has challenged generations of audiences, directors, and scholars.