Measure For Measure, William Shakespeare

I'm back in my Shakespeare phase. In the last couple of weeks I've focused on three Shakespeare plays:

• The Winter's Tale;
• The Tempest;
• The Merchant of Venice.

Now, for the fourth play: Measure for Measure.

 The books this week. Focus on Measure for Measure.

• William Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, editor, c. 2004.
• "Measure for Measure": The Flesh Made Word, Ronald R. MacDonald, p. 343
• Shakespeare's First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, Emma Smith, c. 2016, from the local library, looks and feels brand new!
• Shakespeare's Guide to Italy: Retracing the Bard's Unknown travels, Richard Paul Roe, c. 2011, in personal library.

Most rewarding: I think I. have "discovered" something in The Merchant of Venice not mentioned in any of the several sources regarding the play. 

My hunch: Antonio, Bassanio, and Portio represented a threesome of sorts, though not altogether at once. My hunch: Antonio and Bassanio were more than close friends. For staging, one might consider a "Johnny Depp" as Antonio. Portia? Carey Mullilgan. Bassanio, perhaps Antonio Banderas. Or perhaps, better yet, Antonio Banderas as Antonio the merchant, and Johnny Depp as Bassanio.

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Measure For Measure

The play, wiki. 

My notes here. 

Why was the play set in Vienna?

It would be hard to make this play into a family (G-rated) movie for Americans. It would be banned, without a doubt, in Florida.

The Elizabethans loved it; the Victorians, not so much: From wiki: 

In late Victorian times, the subject matter of the play was deemed controversial, and there was an outcry when Adelaide Neilson appeared as Isabella in the 1870s.

The Oxford University Dramatic Society found it necessary to edit it when staging it in February 1906, with Gervais Rentoul as Angelo and Maud Hoffman as Isabella, and the same text was used when Oscar Asche and Lily Brayton staged it at the Adelphi Theatre in the following month.

Adelaide Neilson: wiki. 

I assume Ms Neilson was the Meryl Streep or the Julia Roberts of her day. 

Born in Yorkshire. There's a special place in my heart for Yorkshire. If I had all the money in the world, I would have a home in Pateley Bridge. Specifically, at the northeast corner at the intersection of the B6265 and Lupton Bank.

Ironically, having spent much time in Pateley Bridge, and more specifically "on" Lupton Bank," I've never asked where the name "Lupton" comes from.

Wow, wow, wow, here goes. Again, from wiki:

The Lupton family in Yorkshire achieved prominence in ecclesiastical and academic circles in England in the Tudor era through the fame of Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College and chaplain to Henry VII and Henry VIII.

By the Georgian era, the family was established as merchants and ministers in Leeds.

Described in the city's archives as "landed gentry, a political and business dynasty", they had become successful woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers who flourished during the Industrial Revolution and traded throughout northern Europe, the Americas and Australia.

The Luptons in Yorkshire: Lupton is a placename surname connected with Lupton in Cumbria (formerly Westmoreland).

The surname in Yorkshire is recorded in 1297 in Subsidy Rolls (Robert Lupton), in the 1379 poll tax in Thornton in Lonsdale (Thomas de Lupton), in Pateley Bridge (Leonard Luptonn) in 1551 and (George Lupton) in 1553 and in 1599 in Keighley (Judithe Luptonne). Father Robert Lupton was the Vicar of Skipton in 1430.

And it's time to move on.