**3. The Logic of Substitution and Figures of Repetition**

It is not surprising, given all the work on semiotics in the theatre using Peirce's triadic logic, that a modern production of *Measure for Measure*, would resonate with the process of transformability of the sign in the way I have described above. But I think that the play is uniquely responsive to triadic logic and lends itself ultimately to Trinitarian and religious iconography in a deep structural way that Cheek by Jowl, with its emphasis on "liveness" and the transformability of the human experience, could hardly avoid. Before turning to the moments in the CBJ production that most dynamically enact the rejection of the binary, the lure of the triad and the resolution of the Trinity, I argue that the critical reception of the play text corresponds to this move as well. Using a play that has long been featured in critical analyses as an example of substitution (from G. Wilson Knight and William Empson on), I interrogate the varied critical responses to the play's logic of substitution and displacement, and offer as an alternative reading that the rhetorical figures of repetition and substitution in the play point to a triadic rendering of these forms that eschews traditional binary formations the play tries to set up in favor a strident call for more, just as Hopkins begins the last stanza of his Kingfisher poem: "I say more." Encoded in the smallest rhetorical figures in the play is a demand for excess, for replacement that never satisfies.

As Debra Shuger points out in her book on the political theologies of *Measure for Measure*, it is the only play with an overtly Biblical title, referencing the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7:2, "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (Tyndale). The repetition in the Bible passage, which Shakespeare simplified, is itself a figure of repetition that George Puttenham identifies in *The Art of English Poesy*. He calls it traductio or the "tranlacer," writing:

Then haue ye a figure which the Latines call Traductio, and I the tranlacer: which is when ye turne and tranlace a word into many sundry shapes as the Tailor doth his garment, & after that sort do play with him in your dittie.

## *The Art of English Poesy: A Critical Edition* 2007, p. 304.

The repetition of terms with slight syntactical changes shows the poet, like a tailor, stitching together language to create something new.<sup>6</sup> "Play" with language is a key feature of Puttenham's description of repetition. In the title of his play, Shakespeare takes the Sermon on the Mount and streamlines the repetition to create a balanced syntax. This title represents the beginning of Shakespeare's engagement with repetition in the text. In the title of the play, we can read a simple exchange and repetition, but as the drama unfolds, that repetition is anything but simple. In fact, the play is more likely to "turn" and "tranlace" a word, in spite of the way it asserts the opposite.

As many critics have observed, *Measure for Measure* begins with an attempted erasure of power. Duke Vincentio decides to step down in favor of his deputy, Angelo. But Vincentio's self-imposed exile hardly mirrors a retirement from public life; instead Vincentio plans to return in disguise to survey his deputy's performance. In turning over the keys to his kingdom, he surmises to Escalus, "What **figure** of us think you he will bear?" (1.1.16).<sup>7</sup> Duke Vincentio already imagines Angelo replacing him—"supply (ing)" his "absence." A measure for measure; a Vincentio for an Angelo. By using the language of rhetoric and art, "figure," Vincentio foregrounds the idea of representation, and this is, in many ways, a false representation because Angelo's governance is temporary. The Duke imagines him enforcing the laws that the Duke has failed to uphold, and then the Duke believes that he will eventually reassert his own power. Critics have seen in this the play's debate over contemporary

<sup>6</sup> Many critics have written on Shakespeare and the use of repetition, see (Brown 1999; Sears 1973; Hoy and Hibbard 1984; Rauh 2013; Culler 2015).

<sup>7</sup> All references to *Measure for Measure* are from (Shakespeare 2016).

religious debates between the Puritan and Anglican assertion of civil government and authority.<sup>8</sup> Also, the binary between private morals and public justice is often asserted in criticism of the play. However, through the figures of repetition in the play, these binaries are constantly challenged, and the language of over-fulfillment is asserted.

Consider that while the characters of government—Angelo, Escalus and the Duke—construct a "balanced" transfer of power, the comic characters—Lucio, Pompey, and Elbow—exert a verbal wordplay of repetition and misdirection that quickly leaves the "balance" of "measure for measure" behind. When we first meet Lucio (described as a "fantastic"), he debates with two gentlemen about the nature of Grace. After tossing the word about as the prayer before the meal, Lucio declares, "Grace is grace, despite all controversy: as, for example thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace" (1.2.24–26). Like Puttenham's tranlacer, Shakespeare plays with "grace." The controversy is over one kind of grace (by divine appointment), with another (by good works), and yet Lucio inserts a third kind of grace, which the gentlemen is surely lacking. This kind of repetition with a difference is often merged with a third term in *Measure for Measure*. Shakespeare often sets his clowns to do this work; much like Dogberry, the constable in *Much Ado About Nothing*, Elbow misplaces his words through repetition and a malefactor becomes a benefactor. Pompey, a bawd and a tapster, uses repetition to assert authority, especially speaking to Escalus and Angelo:

Pompey: And I beseech you look into Master Froth here, sir, a man of fourscore pound a year, whose father died at Hallowmas. Was't not at Hallowmas, Master Froth? Froth: All Hallow Eve. Pompey: Why, very well: I hope here be truths.

## 2.1.117–121

After the repetition that confirms his error, Pompey searches for truth, as if the initial incorrect repetition is fully supplied and corrected by the right one. This is a comic turn of the tricolon, where the third term in the repetition bears the humor through deflation, confusion, irony or rejection.

Though Shakespeare's clowns rely heavily on figures of repetition, so too do his more serious characters, Isabella, Angelo, and the Duke. At the beginning of the play, Isabella, a novice of St. Clare's, encounters Angelo and immediately resorts to the kind of repetitive structures we see in the comic character's banter. Pleading for her brother's life to Angelo, who is carrying out a sentence of death on all fornicators (Claudio, Isabella's brother, has impregnated his fiancee, Juliet), Isabella frames her pleas like the tranlacer of Puttenham's *Poesy*:

There is a vice that most I do abhor, And most desire should meet the blow of justice, For which I would not plead, but that I must, For which I must not plead, but that I am At war 'twixt will and will not.

2.2.29–33.

Isabella, like the clowns, plays with repetition and language in a way that makes puns available to Angelo's ears. The doubleness of language kindles in her speech: abhor/abwhore, blow (to strike)/blow (to breathe). Throughout this scene, as Isabella begs for her brother's life and Angelo suddenly finds himself attracted to her, they repeat each other, bouncing back and forth the words, "honor," "fault," "forfeit," "brother," "pity," "sense." Angelo, too, structures his thoughts through repetition, "What's this? What's this? Is this her fault or mine?/The tempter or the tempted, who sins most, ha?/ Not she, nor doth she tempt; but it is I? (2.2.161–164). Not only does he play with these different iterations of

<sup>8</sup> See especially: (Diehl 1998; Shuger 2001; Magedanz 2004; Lorenz 2013).

tempt, but he is picking up Isabella's language from a few lines above, "temporal" and "temptation." Across characters, the poet turns the words, their roots and extensions around in the aural space of the scene.

In a final example, out of the many repetitions and "tranlacings" that happen in the play, when Isabella accuses Angelo in front of the Duke of trying to barter her virginity for her brother's life, she does so with a double repetition that resolves in a third repetition of superfluity:

Angelo: And she will speak most bitterly and strange. Isabella: Most strange, but yet most truly, will I speak: That Angelo's forsworn; is it not strange? That Angelo's a murderer; is 't not strange? That Angelo is an adulterous thief, An hypocrite, a virgin-violator; Is it not strange and strange? Vincentio: Nay, it is ten times strange. Isabella: It is not truer he is Angelo Than this is all as true as it is strange: Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth To the end of reckoning.

5.1.37–47.

In the middle of this speech, Isabella accumulates the evidence against Angelo, and in the third repetition, the exhibition of his crime overflows. Shakespeare uses repetition for humor and emphasis, but also to demonstrate excess. Rarely do we find in the text a single repetition, more often there is always a third term, as in this moment that overflows and is overdone (signified even in Mistress Overdone, herself). On the level of the word, Shakespeare heightens the drama and the stakes by investing the language with repetitive structures, and his use of the third level of repetition suggests that the play's initial negotiation of "measure for measure" may not be the whole story.
