Isabella a05 Flashcards
Suzann McLean
l’You could conclude that her character is better suited to the contemplative world of the nunnery than to the fluctuating influence of the city outside’
Juliet Stevenson
‘The language in this scene is erotic…Isabella and Angelo have been copulating across the verse ever since they met’
Juliet Stevenson: “I think that she recognises her own sexuality and the need to apply strict control over it…she wants to dominate it”
Cedric Watts:
As the Duke emerges as the central manipualtor…Isabella loses her independence and becomes subserivent”
Couch
‘Isabella becomes a mere procuress’
Marx
“She is guilty not because of her choice to preserve her chastity and refuse the cruel bargain, but because of her righteous malice that now, like Angelo’s, would condemn her brother to death” (sec. 2).
- Criticses how puritan ideal is an mere illusion
Bloom
That would make Isabella the type of all those gifted and beautiful, disturbed and disturbing hysterical muses of psychoanalysis, the women of Vienna whom Freud and his disciples both exalted and exploited.’
/most provoative character, excites angelos sadism
Reifer
Her muteness may not signify the helplessness of an actress who has run out of lines / but the resistance of a woman who no longer wishes to speak someone else’s.
-Mirrors vow of silence not to talk to men/Chasitiy of a nun, her cyclical rejection of patriarchy
Bloom/sadism
Bloom
-Isabella is his most sexually provocative female characters/she exictes angelos sadism’
-Angelo similar to a construct of the marquis du Sade - . ‘Sade’s fusion of political authority, spiritual dominance, and sexual torture is anticipated by Angelo
- Angelo would be willing to substitute torturing the brother for ravishing the sister. That, too, would be measure for measure
Simon McBurney’s 2004 Production at the National Theatre
In this staging, McBurney presented a darker interpretation, where Isabella’s silence in the final scene underscored her powerlessness. The production featured a vast stage with a solitary white room containing a bed with a red rose, emphasizing Isabella’s isolation. Her desperate, wordless response to the Duke’s proposal highlighted her lack of agency.
