Incest in Pardon and Marriage - People Fas Harvard

Incest in Pardon and Marriage
This is not to say that Lucio, in slandering the Duke, has said any-
thing essentially incorrect. The text of the play gives us good reason to
suppose that what Lucio says is partly true (the more so if we conflate
intent and act), good reason to conclude that Vincentio himself is, as
Escalus's accusation "Slander to th' state!" (5.1.320) suggests, the great-
est slanderer of the state in Measure for Measure. We may say, then, that
Lucio (from lux, which means "light") sheds as much light on the
world of Measure for Measure as Clare (from claritas, which also means
"light") was supposed to shed on the
Lucio's role as gadfly is to remind both the human Duke and our-
selves of the Duke's questionable intentions, if not questionable acts.
(Compare the Duke's outbreak: "Twice treble shame on Angelo, /
To weed my vice, and let his grow!" [3.2.262-631.) By the time the
Friar-Duke asks in the final act, "And was the Duke a fleshmonger?"
(5.1.33 I), the constant buzzing of Lucio's aspersions (e.g., "his use was
to put a ducat in her clack-dish" and "the Duke yet would have dark
deeds darkly answered" [3.2.123, 170-711) has made us aware that
this question is not easy to answer.2s
That Lucio's slander is substantially true helps to locate within the
logic of the play one of his most important, if ignored, aspects. As
Coghill and Lawrence suggest, Lucio is in the know.'g Although in his
first words Lucio, conversing with the Gentlemen, implies that the
Duke is absent from Vienna on some international political mission
(1.2.1 -3), he soon afterwards claims that the Duke is "very strangely
gone from hence" (1.4.50) and that "His giving out were of an infinite
distance / From his true-meant design" (1.4.54-55). Lucio means ei-
ther that the public is not aware of what the Duke intended or that the
Duke himself is not aware, or both. Friar Thomas hints at the possibil-
ity that the Duke himself is unaware of his intentions by suggesting
that the Duke's actual design is some kind of love affair (1.3.1-3).
Similarly, the scene in which Lucio accurately criticizes Angelo as a
would-be "motion ungenerative" (3.2.108) includes an equally sug-
gestive series of passages between Lucio and the Duke as Friar that
comes remarkably close to unmasking as a usurping, libertine beggar
the Duke for whom Angelo substitutes:
Lucio. What news, friar, of the Duke? (3.2.83)
Duke. I know none: can you tell me of any?
Lucio. Some say he is with the Emperor of Russia; other some, he is in Rome:
but where is he, think you?
Duke. I know not where: but wheresoever, I wish him well.
Lucio. It was a mad, fantastical trick of him to steal from the state and usurp
the beggary he was never born to.