Scholarship

Question 1

Wilbur Dunkel Lucio

Answer 1

‘the function of Lucio is to keep us informed and unite the characters’

Question 2

Stacy Magdenz

Answer 2

‘[Angelo] is penitent but still prefers death to redemption’

Question 3

Wilson Knight Isabella

Answer 3

‘the frosty lack of sympathy of a self-regarding puritanism’

Question 4

Wilson Knight the Duke

Answer 4

‘the Duke’s original leniency is shown to be right’

‘the Duke, like Jesus, is the prophet of a new order of ethics’

Question 5

Wilson Knight Angelo

Answer 5

‘[Angelo’s] chief faults are self deception and pride in his own righteousness’
redeemed at the end- ‘he has become human’

Question 6

Irene McGarrity

Answer 6

‘[all characters] struggle towards an ideal virtue while acting on mythical vice’s terms, forgetting about humanity’

Question 7

Robert Wilson

Answer 7

‘marriage as [an] instrument for controlling desire’

Question 8

Lawrence Isabella

Answer 8

‘i do not think there is any doubt that Isabella turns to him with a heavenly and yielding smile’

Question 9

Lawrence the Duke

Answer 9

‘essentially a puppet’

Question 10

Chambers Angelo

Answer 10

‘cold-hearted, self-righteous pig’

Question 11

John Cox women

Answer 11

‘men only’ play- women only have roles to serve men

Question 12

Psychoanalytical interpretation

Answer 12

Freudian theory: Isabella and Angelo sexually repressed- explains Isabella’s unintentional innuendos

Question 13

Charlotte Lennox Isabella

Answer 13

‘vixen’

Question 14

Hazlitt Barnadine

Answer 14

‘a fine antithesis to the morality and hypocrisy of the other characters’

Question 15

Hazlitt Claudio

Answer 15

‘detestable’

Question 16

Cowden Clarke Isabella

Answer 16

‘one of the most beautiful-souled among Shakespeare’s beautifully-souled women’

Question 17

Wilson Knight on the whole play

Answer 17

religious allegory- read as a parable, like Jesus’ teachings

Question 18

Stevenson Isabella

Answer 18

‘she is the living antidote to all human charity’

Question 19

Austen the Duke

Answer 19

‘a puppeteer’

Question 20

Samuel Johnson Angelo

Answer 20

‘every reader feels some indignation when he is spared’

Question 21

Hazlitt the Duke

Answer 21

‘more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the well-being of the state’

Question 22

Harriet Hawkins Isabella

Answer 22

‘the feminine counterpart of Angelo’

Question 23

David Holbrook Angelo

Answer 23

‘sex maniac’

Question 24

Charles Marowitz women

Answer 24

‘No one treated women with more exclusive cruelty than Shakespeare’

Question 25

Who censored the play?

Answer 25

Thomas Bowdler (Victorian)

Question 26

Earliest criticism

Answer 26

Didn’t like any characters e.g. Charlotte Lennox

Question 27

Early nineteenth-century criticism

Answer 27

Hazlitt, censored by Thomas Bowdler

Question 28

Mid-nineteenth-century criticism

Answer 28

Idealises Isabella e.g. Cowden Clarke

Question 29

twentieth-century criticism

Answer 29

Seen as artistic failure because doesn’t fit other categories. Wilson Knight- parable.

Question 30

Performance criticism

Answer 30

Wasn’t performed in Victorian times because it offended conventional sensibilities

Question 31

Carolyn Brown Mariana

Answer 31

Isabella and the duke repressed sexually not Mariana

Question 32

Marian Cox Escalus

Answer 32

‘Man of words and therefore a man of worth’

Question 33

Andrew Sanders

Answer 33

‘Play of dark corners’

Because of the low lives

Question 34

G Wilson Knight Mistress Overdone

Answer 34

‘Professional immorality’

Question 35

Maurice Charney

Answer 35

‘Ultimate truth teller’