Measure for Measure’s Language of the Body Sara Manlowe College

The language of the body in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure furthers one of the main tensions of the plot, namely, the manifold nature of having a body. First, that one’s state as a person is determined by one’s physicality, and vice versa. One’s body is key in one’s emotions, as Lucio says, ‘to jest, tongue far from heart’ (1.4.34-5), providing an anatomical image to illustrate the joking nature of his personality. Then, that trouble stems from denying one’s body, as Angelo does, but also from giving it free rein, though one may not always have a choice in the matter. Thus the body is portrayed as servant – ‘Friend thou hast none; / For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire’ (3.1.27-8) – and master, that one ‘should slip so grossly, both in the heat of blood, / And lack of temper’d judgment afterward’ (5.1.461-62). The play itself is a body, and from the first scene of the first act, central tensions are framed with bodily language. For example, Duke Vincentio refers to handing Vienna’s leadership to Angelo as ‘[giving] him the organs of our own power’ (1.1.22) – already, this image of pulsing blood, of various elements of state working in tandem as do the organs in a body, healthy when properly functional but also...