Interpretations+ Dramatisations 3

Question 1

Dramatisations RSC 2019 Doran

Answer 1

2.4- Angelo very inappropriately touches her
5.1- Angelo begins off very loud then begins to beg for mercy
5.1- Lucio begins begging on his knees to the Duke so he doesn’t have to remarry

Question 2

Dramatisations- 2015 Donnellan

Answer 2

4.2- Angelo lifts up her dress takes off Isabella’s socks while she’s crying and he’s on his knees
5.1- Isabella sobbing on her knees and crying at the very end

Question 3

Dramatisation- Desmond Davis 1979

Answer 3

2.4-Not as agressive but Isabella grabbed onto Angelo and he throws her off (In all productions she wears white)
5.1- Duke has very grand entrance and people start clapping.

Question 4

Katherine Eisaman Maus (2008)

Answer 4

‘Angelo is sexually aroused by prohibition,her nun’s habit marks her as taboo: he finds her irresistible.
‘Some modern critics have found [Isabella’s] defiance heroic, others chilling or selfish.
in Shakespeare’s time, she elicited a similarly mixed response.’
Isabella is not exactly a rape victim; she must, as Angelo says, “fit her consent” to his proposal.
Does that consent, even reluctant, contaminate her with his sin?

Question 5

Philip Brockbank (1989)

Answer 5

Dukes lies are white lies, Shakespeare and Duke are tricksters, but tricks played to serve a purpose

Question 6

Jonathan Dollimore (1985)

Answer 6

Stigmatises sex as guilt, sinister form of ideological control (the Duke)

Question 7

Harriet Hawkins and Cedric Watts (both in the 1980s)

Answer 7

the play’s lack of moral certainty.

Question 8

L.C. Knights (1987)

Answer 8

play’s ambiguity is one of its strengths.

Question 9

Lisa Jardine (1983)

Answer 9

Isabella’s character is drawn from a range of stereotypes of female behaviour; “while Isabella may seem to resist such stereotypes, her punishment is to be disliked by the play and its audience”.

Question 10

Josephine Walters Bennett (1966)

Answer 10

‘we should enjoy the dilemmas of the characters without imagining that they could really happen’.

Question 11

F. R. Leavis (1962)

Answer 11

The Duke is ‘a kind of Providence directing the action from above. His attitude is meant to be ours his total attitude, which is the attitude of the play.

Question 12

George Bernard Shaw (1898)

Answer 12

play is ahead of its time, and that Shakespeare, ‘is ready and willing to start at the
twentieth century if only the seventeenth would let him’.

Question 13

Walter Pater (1839-94)

Answer 13

It demonstrates ‘the tyranny of nature and circumstance over human action’. The play has a ‘finer justice’ than other plays, as it is more true to life:

Question 14

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1827)

Answer 14

‘It is a hateful work… Our feelings of justice are grossly wounded by Angelo’s escape. Isabella
herself contrives to be unamiable, and Claudio is detestable.’

Question 15

William Hazlitt (1817)

Answer 15

play is ‘as full of genius as it is of wisdom’; however, saying ‘our sympathies are repulsed and defeated in all directions’.

Question 16

Dr Johnson (1765)

Answer 16

must sufficiently justify punishment … and I believe every reader feels some indignation when he finds him spared.’ contrasting elements make it a ‘mingled drama’, so the play is representative of real life, which combines the tragic and comic, good
and bad.

Question 17

Charlotte Lennox (1753-55)

Answer 17

Shakespeare’s use of dark elements in the play, ‘tortures it into a Comedy

Question 18

John Fletcher (1610)

Answer 18

‘a tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy,