It's a rainy day on Indian Point Road, and it's the first full day off for the acting company of Measure for Measure. We've been running full sprint since we arrived in Stonington, right through our exciting opening weekend of performances. A day of rest feels welcome and well-deserved. Especially a grey day with gentle rain falling. The kind of day that gives your thoughts room to settle. I'm baking a peach and blackberry pie. In a little while I'll walk down the road to enjoy a convivial dinner with the rest of the M4M company.
For now, though, I am looking out the window at the rain, sitting alone in the sweet little house that I call the Moated Grange, in honor of Mariana, one of the five characters I play in Measure for Measure. "I will presently to Saint Luke's," says the Duke to Isabella, "there, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana." For me, my characters always find their ways into my life. Or my life finds its way into my characters. This year in Stonington I find myself playing a girl who is suspended in a kind of tragic limbo: unrequited love and grief and, maybe, hope, foolish or otherwise...A central plot point turns on her history with Angelo. As we head towards our second week of performances I continue to be fascinated by the competing versions of that history woven into Shakespeare's text.
The undisputed facts: five years before the play begins, Mariana and Angelo were engaged; her war hero brother Frederick (her only surviving relative) died at sea in a shipwreck that also claimed her dowry; Angelo then broke off the engagement. There are different versions of why. Tommy Piper (Angelo) and I have an ongoing and lively debate about the Why.
In the Duke's version, Angelo "swallowed his vows whole, pretending in her discoveries of dishonor"--as in, he made up rumors about Mariana as an excuse to get out of marrying her when her dowry was lost--and abandoned her in her deep grief. In Angelo's version, the marriage plans were broken off "partly for that her promised proportions came short of composition, but in chief for that her reputation was disvalued in levity." So who is telling the truth?
Oh, I believe the Duke, here. In both text and action, Mariana is virtuous. She truly loves Angelo and must have believed he loved her: "This is that face, thou cruel Angelo, which once thou swor'st was worth the looking on." Her love for Angelo is past reason, past sense--surely we can sympathize with that. Isn't there redemption to be found in love that true? Isn't that the essence of mercy? That love is forgiveness, and that vengeance is a small weak thing next to the great vastidity of love?
Well, I cite the Beatles. All you need is love.
When I step out of the mindset of Mariana, I know Angelo does some baaad things. I know it. But Mariana has gotten so deep into me that I can't help believing that he deserves forgiveness too. Don't we want Mariana to be happy? Even if she loves not wisely, but too well?
The sky is darkening. The pie is cooling on top of the stove and I'm gazing out the window at the water. Time to walk down the road to dinner.
Mariana bakes pies, and dreams of Angelo.
O Melody, you have taken to heart the essential lessons of this play -- forgiveness and compassion. I feel certain this is why your Mariana is so richly alive onstage. You endow her with complexity and the carefulness that comes from respect. Thank you for thinking so deeply about the play, the character and the poetry of bringing the two together in your art.
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