Kenneth Starr

Oklahoma City University Law Review
Volume 26, Number 1, 2001
Reprinted by permission of the Law Review

KENNETH STARR--AMONG OTHERS--SHOULD HAVE
(RE)READ MEASURE FOR MEASURE *

ROBERT BATEY**

As "Monicagate," that unpredictable concatenation of events beginning with a little illicit sex and ending in an impeachment, spun further and further out of anyone's control, I began to wonder what could have been done to spare us this ordeal. One thought that soon materialized was that Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor whose investigation and report led to the impeachment and trial of a President, might have profited from taking a weekend off during the first half of 1998 in order to read (or reread, for

[261]

all I know) Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.¹ This "problem play," so-called because it is neither tragedy nor comedy,² mordantly investigates crime and government's response to it, providing pointed lessons for prosecutors, especially one seeking to impose a serious penalty for fornication and its concealment, for which crime the penalty is death in the Vienna Shakespeare depicts.
    After a little musing, it became clear to me that just as Starr had his analogue as prosecutor in Measure for Measure's Angelo, so some other players in "the Lewinsky matter" found likenesses in the drama. Angelo has his older and presumably wiser adviser Escalus, a fictional version of Starr's Sam Dash. Two of President Clinton's more outrageous political defenders, Dick Morris and Larry Flynt, bear similarities to characters in the play who set themselves against Angelo and the harsh punishments he seeks to impose. Nor will I ever again see the leading congressional proponents of impeachment without thinking of Shakespeare's bumbling constable Elbow, who is no match in court for the witty wrongdoers he captures. Even Monica herself finds models in Measure for Measure--Juliet, whose sexual indiscretions give rise to the fornication prosecution, and Mariana, who sacrifices her virtue to get the man she loves.
    It dawned more slowly that the play has likenesses of President Clinton as well: not only Claudio, the young man sentenced to death for impregnating his fiancee Juliet, but also Vincentio, Duke of Vienna, whose abdication of responsibility gives Angelo the power to bring his charges against Claudio and others, and whose behind-the-scenes machinations--he spends most of the play masquerading as a friar--make the situation far worse for almost all involved. Bill Clinton too could have benefitted from (re)reading Measure for Measure, although for him it would have been better to do so many months earlier than Starr, before the President ever became involved with Monica Lewinsky or in efforts to keep their relationship a secret.
    My final realization of the play's contemporary topicality is that one can even find Hillary Clinton in it--both in Lucio, who tries to save his

[262]

friend Claudio but in the process antagonizes the Duke, about whom Lucio knows too much, and in Isabella, Claudio's forceful but rigid sister, who at one point spurns her brother because of his moral laxity, and ends the drama facing a decision whether to marry the Duke, who has moral problems of his own. For Hillary Clinton, the most appropriate time to (re)read Measure for Measure is probably now, as she decides the public and private future of her own marriage.

*** In the obscure opening lines of Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio, the ruler of Vienna, takes as his topic, "of government the properties to unfold,"³ and the prominence of this phrase at the play's outset suggests a message for those who wield the proper powers of government, most notably the power to charge and punish for crime. Vincentio has decided to depart Vienna for a time, and rather than invest his authority in the learned Escalus--"For common justice y'are as pregnant in / As art and practice hath enriched any / That we remember."⁴--he leaves in charge the younger Angelo: "Hold therefore, Angelo. / In our remove be thou at full ourself; / Mortality and mercy in Vienna / Live in thy tongue and heart. Old Escalus, / Though first in question, is thy secondary. Take thy commission."⁵
Although the Duke professes a high opinion of Angelo, as someone whose life advertises his virtue,⁶others in Vienna are more dubious, especially after they have gotten a taste of Angelo's regime. Not surprisingly, Claudio has a low opinion of Angelo after he has sentenced Claudio to death for violating the laws against fornication, which had gone unenforced for nineteen years. ⁷ Claudio believes that Angelo, "the demigod

[263]

Authority,"⁸ acts either from "tyranny"⁹ ("the body public be / A horse whereon the governor doth ride, / Who, newly in the seat, that it may know / He can command lets it straight feel the spur"¹⁰ or "for a name,"¹¹ in order to build his reputation. Claudio's derisive friend Lucio is far more personal, describing Angelo to Claudio's sister Isabella as "a man whose blood / Is very snowbroth,"¹² and later to a friar (really the Duke in disguise) as one who "was not made by man and woman after the downright way of creation. . . . Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some, that he was begot between two stockfishes. But it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice . . . ."¹³
In common with many others who have exercised public power, the career of Kenneth Starr has sparked adulation and opprobrium similar to that heaped on Angelo. Long noted for his conservative rectitude--from the time he clerked for Chief Justice Burger, through practice in and out of government, and in his service as a federal circuit court judge and as solicitor general¹⁴Starr has also received criticism for that very piety and for lack of comprehension of the juices of life. In words somewhat more temperate than Lucio's, but still similar, Starr has been scorned for his puritanism.¹⁵ And in words like Claudio's, some have complained of Starr's

[264]

single-minded devotion to the expansion of his reputation and thus his political influence.¹⁶
So Starr, flipping through the pages of Measure for Measure in his Washington office on a chilly afternoon, might have noticed some likenesses between his public perception and that of Angelo. But Starr would certainly have considered the perception wrongheaded, because his relentless pursuit of executive wrongdoing was justified, as he and many

[265]

apologists for his actions asserted.¹⁷ Of course, Angelo also feels justified in harshly enforcing the law against fornication even though it had fallen into desuetude. Just before setting the execution of Claudio for first thing the next morning, Angelo explains to Escalus how inconsistency in enforcement can be a virtue:

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.¹⁸

When Escalus suggests mercy, asking Angelo to consider whether he might ever have been tempted to Claudio's crime, the younger man haughtily replies:

'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. . . .
. . .
You may not so extenuate his offense
For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,
When I, that censure him, do so offend,
Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,
And nothing come in partial. Sir, he must die.¹⁹

These lines reflect Shakespeare's irony, for Angelo will in fact commit a similar crime with Claudio's sister Isabella, he thinks, but through the Duke's conniving, actually with Mariana, Angelo's former fiancee whom he had jilted when her dowry proved insufficient. Angelo will be sentenced to death for it, although the Duke will commute the sentence, on the condition that Angelo marry Mariana. The lesson taught by this irony seems to be that even the most self-righteous accuser should try to recognize the

[266]

fallibility he shares with the accused--a point that Angelo articulates in his justification, though he misses entirely its application to himself:

I not deny,
The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try. . . .
. . . What knows the laws
That thieves do pass on thieves?²⁰

Angelo does not understand that we are all thieves of one sort or another, just as Kenneth Starr probably did not understand when media commentators like Maureen Dowd, as well as ordinary citizens, began bracketing Starr with President Clinton as wrongdoers of roughly equal proportion.²¹ Starr's perceived wrongs were abuses of prosecutorial power: trying to coerce witnesses like Susan McDougal,²² Webster Hubbell,²³ and

[267]

Monica Lewinsky herself²⁴ into testimony unfavorable to Clinton (with assertedly little concern for the truth of such testimony); leaking evidence protected by grand jury secrecy in order to embarrass the President;²⁵and threatening obstruction of justice charges against critics of his investigation.²⁶ Angelo's wrongs were also abuses of prosecutorial power, but they were born of lust, not politics. When Isabella, persuaded by her brother's friend Lucio, comes to plead with Angelo for Claudio's life, Angelo finds himself smitten. Three times Isabella makes arguments similar to Escalus':

Go to your bosom:
Knock there and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault.²⁷

But Angelo can respond only with formulaic (and false) disclaimers like "it is the law not I condemn your brother,"²⁸ accompanied by standard incantations of the need for deterrence to protect future victims.²⁹ Angelo's turgid responses spark a memorable rebuke from Isabella:

[268]

[M]an, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As makes the angels weep . . . .³⁰

A likely reason for Angelo's stiffness surfaces only after Isabella departs, when he soliloquizes on her "virtue" and "modesty":³¹

What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? . . .
. . . .
. . . Never could the strumpet
With all her double vigor, art, and nature
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Ever till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.³²

Angelo's attraction to Isabella befuddles him in their first interview, but when she reappears soon after, he has mastered his confusion and is now completely given over to lust, ready to pardon Claudio if Isabella will sleep with him. Isabella begins this second, private interview with the statement, "I am come to know your pleasure,"³³ which Angelo turns into a double entendre: "That you might know it would much better please me / Than to demand what 'tis."³⁴ Isabella misses his meaning, and continues to, even when he presents his proposition as a hypothetical question:

Which had you rather, that the most just law
Now took your brother's life, or, to redeem him,
Give up your body to such sweet uncleanness
As she that he hath stained?³⁵

[269]

The chaste Isabella demurs, but Angelo, arguing with dazzling sophistry--"I can speak / Against the thing I say."³⁶ tries to convince Isabella that there would "be a charity in sin / To save this brother's life"³⁷ and that a sister who refused to make such a sacrifice would be "as cruel as the sentence / That you have slandered so."³⁸ Thinking he has thus confused his quarry, Angelo turns his abstract proposal into a very concrete one:

Angelo:    Plainly conceive that I love you.
Isabella:    My brother did love Juliet, And you tell me that he shall die for it.
Angelo:    He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love.³⁹

Isabella, not as confused as Angelo might think--and not so innocent as the reader might think--immediately tries to blackmail Angelo into releasing her brother:

Sign me a present pardon for my brother,
Or with an outstretched throat I'll tell the world aloud
What man thou art.⁴⁰

Angelo parries this strategy easily: Considering "my unsoiled name, the austereness of my life, / My vouch against you, and my place i' the state,"⁴¹ "Who will believe thee, Isabel?"⁴² And to punish Isabella for her temerity, Angelo raises the stakes against her brother:

[270]

Redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will,
Or else he must not only die the death,
But thy unkindness shall his death draw out
To ling'ring sufferance.⁴³

To satisfy his desires, Angelo is willing to threaten not merely death, but torture as well.
How might Kenneth Starr have recognized himself in these actions of Angelo? Substituting Starr's lust to depose a president for Angelo's concupiscence, one can note a rough similarity of technique in achieving the chosen goal, especially in the manner Starr and his minions worked over Monica Lewinsky in order to maximize her incrimination of President Clinton. In Lewinsky's notorious first interrogation, every effort was made to isolate and confuse the young woman, so that she would comply with the special prosecutor's wishes.⁴⁴When these ploys did not succeed, Lewinsky was pressured with threats of incarceration not only against herself, but also against her mother.⁴⁵ Nor were such tactics limited to Starr's star witness, as the experiences of Kathleen Willey's confidante Julia Hiatt Steele and others attest.⁴⁶
It is of course more likely that Kenneth Starr would not have recognized himself in Angelo, instead adhering confidently to the righteousness both of his goals and of his methods. But this would only confirm Isabella's comment that "a little . . . authority"⁴⁷ renders "man,

[271]

proud man"⁴⁸ "most ignorant of what he's most assured,"⁴⁹ as well as Angelo's unconsciously ironic statement to Isabella as he tries to reason her into submission: "We are all frail."⁵⁰ Starr's frailty, like Angelo's, was not just an unwillingness to forgive frailty in others, but an inability to recognize frailty in himself.
Angelo persists in this blindness even as he believes Isabella is agreeing to his proposition. He fussily shows her the way to the walled garden he has chosen for their quick and silent midnight tryst, little knowing the impression he makes on her:

With whispering and most guilty diligence,
In action all of precept, he did show me
The way twice o'er.⁵¹

When the assignation does occur, Angelo is so selfinvolved that he does not notice the substitution of Mariana, which the Duke has engineered, for his beloved Isabella.⁵² These lapses suggest a man caught up in a pursuit without much reflection on its ultimate worth. Sexual gratification is not Angelo's only pursuit, however. He is still out to punish Claudio, so after the tryst, Angelo sends the Provost holding Claudio an order not for his release, but for his quick execution, adding ghoulishly, "for my better satisfaction, let me have Claudio's head sent me . . . ."⁵³ Again, Angelo's commitment to his goal seems to have superseded any reassessment of the propriety of that goal.
In his dogged pursuit of Bill Clinton, Ken Starr's behavior resembles Angelo's. Starr had numerous opportunities to relent, to direct his

[272]

investigation back to its original mission, probing the Whitewater affair, instead of toward exploitation of a tawdry sex scandal. But during the long negotiation process with Monica Lewinsky and her lawyers,⁵⁴ during the preparation of the special prosecutor's mammoth and salacious report to Congress,⁵⁵ and finally in the decision to testify before the House Judiciary Committee--against which Starr's ethics adviser Sam Dash argued strongly and after which he resigned⁵⁶ Kenneth Starr, as diligently committed to his own gratification and as bloodthirsty as Angelo, seemed never to have wondered about the continued propriety of his actions and never to have faltered in his single-minded quest for Clinton's hide.⁵⁷
It is of course possible that Kenneth Starr had, and has, moments of private remorse, just as Angelo does after he believes Claudio to have been executed (a result again thwarted by the Duke's machinations while in disguise as a friar): "Would yet he had lived!"⁵⁸ Whatever Starr's private thoughts, however, his public statements have all been self-serving, as are the comments Angelo initially makes when the Duke returns to Vienna as himself and hears Isabella's and Mariana's public denunciations of Angelo. He responds to Isabella's allegations of fornication and murder by doubting her sanity and her disinterestedness:

[273]

My lord, her wits, I fear me, are not firm.
She hath been a suitor to me for her brother
Cut off by course of justice-- . . . .
And she will speak most bitterly and strange.⁵⁹

As for Mariana, Angelo sketches their previous relationship in tones that impugn Mariana's motives and her character. After acknowledging that he knows her, Angelo adds:

[F]ive years since there was some speech of marriage
Betwixt myself and her, which was broke off,
Partly for that her promised proportions
Came short of composition, but in chief
For that her reputation was disvalued
In levity.⁶⁰

Moments later, Angelo professes anger at the combined complaints of Isabella and Mariana, seeing in them the threat of a great conspiracy:

These poor informal women are no more
But instruments of some more mightier member
That sets them on. Let me have way, my lord,
To find this practice out.⁶¹

The Duke allows such an investigation to proceed while he exits, in order to return in his friar's disguise. After a few minutes of verbal jousting, in which the friar is nominated as the mastermind of the conspiracy, the Duke allows his identity to be revealed, and Angelo realizes that his crimes are secrets no longer. He abruptly confesses and pleads for a quick execution--"Immediate sentence, then, and sequent death, / Is all the grace

[274]

I beg."⁶² But the Duke, showing the mercy Angelo lacked, lets him live as Mariana's husband.
While Kenneth Starr will undoubtedly never confess error, his behavior in the face of accusations otherwise matches Angelo's. In print and in public statements, most notably before the House Judiciary Committee, Starr questioned the character and motives of his detractors⁶³and implied the existence of a conspiracy to thwart the justice he still hoped would be meted out.⁶⁴ The fact that the American people lost faith in his discredited crusade is for Starr, as it is for Angelo, more evidence of wrongdoing and more reason why the crusade had to be maintained. So it is easy to imagine Kenneth Starr continuing to pursue his quarry long after his office is dissolved, in the inevitable book he will write and in-depth interviews he will give.
All this waste of a man's considerable talents--past, present, and future--could have been avoided had Starr shown more wisdom as a prosecutor: more compassion for human frailty, including insight into his own, and less zeal in seeking one's own version of justice while doubting the sincerity of those who disagree. There were many ways to have attained this wisdom, one of which might have been reading a play written nearly four hundred years ago. Measure for Measure was penned long before surreptitious taping and DNA testing of semen stains. But it still is apt, for the human propensities to both illicit sex and righteous hypocrisy remain as strong today as they were in Shakespeare's time.

*** Besides Kenneth Starr, other players in Monicagate can also find themselves in Measure for Measure. Public debate of a man's alleged crimes draws a usual cast of characters, most of whom Shakespeare limned. For example, there is the ineffectual, and typically older, adviser to the overzealous prosecutor, urging mercy and caution. In Measure for Measure, this role falls to Escalus.
Angelo's elder shows his greater wisdom when called to adjudicate the matter of Pompey and Froth, ne'er-do-wells whom Elbow the constable has arrested for being discourteous to his wife. As Elbow's malapropisms and

[275]

Pompey's deceptions mount, Angelo loses patience with both parties, leaving them to Escalus with a recommendation that he "find good cause to whip them all."⁶⁵Escalus knows better, however. He chooses to be merciful to Pompey and Froth, letting them off with warnings,⁶⁶ while hoodwinking the slow Elbow into appreciating this outcome:

Escalus: Truly, officer, because he Pompey hath some offenses in him that thou wouldst discover if thou couldst, let him continue in his courses till thou knowst what they are.
Elbow: Marry, I thank your Worship for it. Thou seest, thou wicked varlet, now, what's come upon thee. Thou art to continue now, thou varlet; thou art to continue.⁶⁷

Having pacified the overzealous law enforcer in this case, Escalus tries to forestall future cases by easing Elbow, seven and a half years a constable, out of his office, saying that his neighbors "do you wrong to put you so oft"⁶⁸in the position, and asking Elbow to bring him a list of possible replacements.⁶⁹
It is no surprise that a man with such a balanced approach to law enforcement would oppose the sentence of death Angelo decrees for Claudio. But even Escalus' opposition is measured, for he is gentle in his

[276]

remonstrances to Angelo and supports his decision to others.⁷⁰This evenhanded approach causes the soliloquizing Duke (still masquerading as a friar but aware of Angelo's treachery) to implicitly compare the just departed Escalus to Angelo:

He who the sword of Heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offenses weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!⁷¹

    While Angelo fails this test, Escalus (up to this point in the play) satisfies it.
    Samuel Dash enjoys a similar reputation for sagacity and propriety. As chief counsel for the Senate committee investigating the Watergate scandal, Dash won admiration from both sides of the aisle, building on the prestige earned as a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, and law professor.⁷² A strong advocate of the rights of criminal defendants, Dash's career also demonstrates an understanding of the value of vigorous prosecution. When he signed on as an ethics adviser to Kenneth Starr, Dash's reputation for fairness gave some comfort to those who doubted Starr's impartiality.⁷³
    Yet Sam Dash proved as ineffectual in curbing Starr as Escalus was in restraining Angelo. At least Dash resigned after Starr's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, before the ethics adviser's reputation was further sullied.⁷⁴ Escalus suffers a worse fate, being drawn into Angelo's

[277]

attempt to discredit Isabella and Mariana after they denounce him before the Duke.⁷⁵ When the Duke absents himself from this scene (so he can return as the friar), he leaves Angelo and Escalus in charge of questioning Angelo's accusers, but it is Escalus who takes the lead and who loses any sense of the balance he has previously displayed. He boasts that he knows "how . . . to handle" Isabella, promising to "go darkly to work with her."⁷⁶ This hint of torture becomes explicit when Escalus claims that the friar "hast suborned these women," crying "to the rack with him! We'll touse you / Joint by joint, but we will know his purpose."⁷⁷ His zeal is so excessive that he is ready to imprison not just the friar, Isabella, and Mariana--"those giglets"--but also another friar, whose only crime is that he has accompanied Isabella and Mariana to the audience with the Duke.⁷⁸ Caught up in an intoxicating hunt for wrongdoers, Escalus loses his perspective and engages in behaviors so extreme that they require a pardon to be forgotten, which the Duke gives after his identity is revealed.⁷⁹ Many of those who have worked for Ken Starr have suffered a similar loss of perspective,⁸⁰ and Sam Dash was fortunate to have avoided this result by resigning when he did.
In addition to the older but wiser adviser, other stock characters in a contemporary criminal investigation and trial are the set of rogues who try to aid one side or the other, but really seek only to further their own agendas. Among President Clinton's defenders, some of the most raffish were Dick Morris, a former presidential adviser dismissed because of his own sex scandal, and Larry Flynt, the infamous publisher of Hustler. Morris, trying to make his way back onto the public stage, dropped broad hints about the state of the President's marriage and his consequent need for

[278]

sexual release.⁸¹ He also joined Flynt in implying that some of the Congressmen who brayed most loudly for impeachment had sexual secrets at least as bad as Clinton's, though the publisher was far more effective, managing to torpedo the congressional career of Robert Livingston, the Speaker-designate of the House of Representatives.⁸²
Behavior like Morris' and Flynt's sparks a conflicted response: We loathe the conduct but have some grudging appreciation for the candor it achieves. Measure for Measure helps to sort out these contending emotions, for it gives us two undeniable wrongdoers whose candor regarding crime stands in stark opposition to the law-and-order hypocrisy of Angelo. Pompey, the procurer, by his words, and Barnardine, a murderer, by his actions, expose the fallacies of trying to hold too tight a rein on the human propensity toward crime.⁸³
Before Escalus lets Pompey off with a warning, they discuss his profession:

Escalus:   How would you live, Pompey? By being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? Is it a lawful trade?
Pompey:   If the law would allow it, sir.
Escalus:   But the law will not allow it, Pompey; nor it shall not be allowed in Vienna.
Pompey:   Does your Worship mean to geld and splay all the youth of the city?⁸⁴

[279]

    Pompey's question bluntly asserts that sexual wrongdoing is inevitable as long as humans remain humans. If not neutered, "they will to't, then."⁸⁵ When Escalus indicates that all fornicators will be liable to the death sentence given Claudio, Pompey rejoins: "If you head and hang all that offend that way but for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a commission for more heads. If this law hold in Vienna ten year, I'll rent the fairest house in it after threepence a bay."⁸⁶ Like Dick Morris, Pompey asks us to understand the urges that lead one to prohibited sex, urges that are universal, but also like Dick Morris, Pompey seeks to profit personally from the wrongdoing.
    It is this desire that is Pompey's downfall. For continuing to pursue his trade, constable Elbow reapprehends the bawd, and this time his sentence is imprisonment and whipping. But the sentence is remitted when Pompey agrees to assist the executioner Abhorson, who is preparing to behead both Claudio and a murderer named Barnardine.⁸⁷ Pompey laments his new profession: "I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd: he doth oftener ask forgiveness."⁸⁸ It is a trenchant comment on criminal justice that Pompey rehabilitates himself by becoming a killer.
    Working in the prison gives Pompey the opportunity to confirm that the propensity to wrongdoing extends beyond sexual offenses. He lists ten acquaintances in prison for crimes ranging from fraud to homicide, "and, I think, forty more"⁸⁹ he knows, each of whom succumbed to desires all too human.⁹⁰
    Barnardine, the killer Pompey is supposed to help kill, differs from this cohort only in attitude. The provost who has supervised the murderer's incarceration, describes him as

[a] man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep: careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.

[280]

. . . .
. . . Drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely drunk. We have very oft awaked him, as if to carry him to execution, and showed him a seeming warrant for it: it hath not moved him at all.⁹¹

    This fearless vitality serves Barnardine well, for it literally saves his life. As Abhorson and Pompey attempt to commence Barnardine's execution, the prisoner candidly refuses: "I have been drinking all night: I am not fitted for't."⁹² When the Duke, once again in his friar's disguise, tries to convince Barnardine to submit, the murderer roars, "I will not consent to die this day, that's certain. . . . I swear I will not die today for any man's persuasion."⁹³ So the hapless executioners give up their project, as the Duke labels the prisoner "[u]nfit to live or die."⁹⁴
    Barnardine's "desperate[ ] mortal[ity]"⁹⁵ prevents his playing the role assigned him in his execution, as it prevents him from adhering to any model set out for him by others. With no fear of death, Barnardine is incorrigibly alive, so much so that the Duke eventually pardons the murderer, despite his guilt "most manifest, and not denied by himself."⁹⁶ This vitality also renders Barnardine incorrigibly human, because he is not conformable to rule. Thus he exhibits, by the most extreme example, the inevitable human tendency to rule-breaking that Pompey asserts.
    Some critics, most recently Harold Bloom, consider Barnardine, who appears in only two scenes and has less than twenty lines of dialogue, nonetheless the heart of Measure for Measure, for he represents the humanity that each of the other characters lacks in significant respects.⁹⁷ For me, there is an odd correspondence between Barnardine's centrality to Shakespeare's play and Larry Flynt's role in Monicagate. Although Flynt's actions on Bill Clinton's behalf were peripheral to his legal struggles, Flynt's public persona as a reckless celebrator of tasteless lechery and

[281]

fearless vilifier of the politically pious,⁹⁸ and the unapologetic crassness of his offer to reward anyone who could provide dirt on those seeking the President's removal, ⁹⁹ seems to capture the "rancidity" of the whole scandal--the same word Harold Bloom identifies as the hallmark of Measure for Measure.¹⁰⁰Like Barnardine, Larry Flynt refuses to conform to society's rules, and like Barnardine, we both condemn and admire Flynt for it.
With snipers like Larry Flynt, the congressional Republicans who pursued Bill Clinton might have won some sympathy, but for their stupid unwillingness to acknowledge that the public did not want the President removed from office. In this respect, they resembled not only the stereotypically dull law enforcers that people every crime saga, but also Shakespeare's representation of this type, Elbow the constable.
When Elbow brings Pompey and Froth before Escalus and Angelo, it is immediately apparent that the constable is in over his head. He begins, "If it please your Honor, I am the poor Duke's constable,"¹⁰¹ thus maligning the missing sovereign, "and do bring in here before your good Honor two notorious benefactors."¹⁰² When Angelo asks whether Elbow means Pompey and Froth are "malefactors," Elbow replies, "I know not well what they are: but precise villains they are," lacking the "profanation . . . that good Christians ought to have,"¹⁰³ which causes Escalus drolly to remark, "here's a wise officer."¹⁰⁴ Elbow's infelicity as an advocate matches some of those in the majority on the House Judiciary Committee, who in the early stages of the committee's process sputteringly insisted that the President

[282]

was a precise villain, even though they did not know well exactly what his offenses were.¹⁰⁵
Continuing to misspeak, Elbow shows similar confusion as he indistinctly relates how his wife, "whom I detest before Heaven"¹⁰⁶ (meaning "protest") as "an honest woman,"¹⁰⁷ was insulted by Pompey and Froth when she entered the bawdyhouse where Pompey worked and Froth played, to ask for some stewed prunes.¹⁰⁸ When Pompey attempts to contradict Elbow, the constable challenges his prisoner to "[p]rove it before these varlets here," ¹⁰⁹ now insulting Angelo and Escalus. Thus Elbow loses control of the proceeding--as the House Judiciary majority risked when they agreed to allow President Clinton's legal staff to participate in their hearings.¹¹⁰ Giving Pompey the floor allows him to obfuscate the inquiry with so many prolix digressions that it taxes both Escalus and Angelo, driving the latter from the scene.¹¹¹ Eventually, however, Escalus seems to begin to enjoy Pompey's burlesque of legal argument, for at its conclusion, he surprisingly comments, "He's in the right. Constable, what say you to it?"¹¹²
Put on the spot, Elbow launches a counterargument that substitutes the word "respected" for "suspected,"¹¹³ which allows Pompey to intervene:

[283]

"By this hand, sir, his wife is a more respected person than any of us."¹¹⁴ This apparent compliment sends Elbow into paroxysms of indignation. First he howlingly demeans his wife: "The time is yet to come that she was ever respected with man, woman, or child."¹¹⁵ Then when Pompey tells Escalus, "Sir, she was respected with him before he married with her,"¹¹⁶ Elbow also angrily denounces himself: "O thou caitiff! O thou varlet! O thou wicked Hannibal! I respected with her before I was married to her! If ever I was respected with her, or she with me, let not your worship think me the poor Duke's officer."¹¹⁷
Flashes of Elbow's impotent indignation surfaced in the impeachment arguments of members of the House Judiciary Committee to the Senate, as they realized that conviction would be soundly rejected, largely because the public did not consider the President's offenses sufficient to remove him from office.¹¹⁸ This public reaction was much like Escalus', who first asks rhetorically as Elbow rages, "Which is the wiser here? Justice or Iniquity?," then jests at the constable's expense over his confusing battery and slander, and finally decides to let Pompey and Froth go with only warnings.¹¹⁹ Most of the American people apparently found the justice of those seeking impeachment at least as offensive as the iniquities of Bill Clinton, so they joked as much about the former as the latter, and let the President continue in office with little more than a warning.¹²⁰And like Escalus,¹²¹ the

[284]

American electorate also began the process of easing the ridiculous law enforcers out of office.¹²² Contemporary crime dramas not only have prosecutors, public critics, and police officers; they usually also have minor players in the alleged criminal scheme, who fall somewhere along the continuum that stretches between accomplice and victim. Two characters in Measure for Measure--Juliet, whom Claudio has impregnated, and Mariana, who at the urging of the Duke (while dressed in friar's robes) substitutes herself for Isabella in her tryst with Angelo--fall into this category, as did Monica Lewinsky herself.
When Lewinsky's name first appeared in the media, many thought of her as a victim, seduced by an older and vastly more powerful man, but a victim reluctant to complain, who had to be tricked into implicating President Clinton by someone she considered her confidante.¹²³ The harsh treatment Lewinsky initially received at the hands of the special prosecutor's staff only enhanced this impression of her.¹²⁴ In these respects, she resembled Juliet in Measure for Measure, the fiancee of Claudio whose pregnancy is the proof of his guilt of fornication. Like Monica, Juliet, "falling in the flaws of her own youth, / Hath blistered her report."¹²⁵ Further, the besmirched Juliet is as reluctant as the outed Monica was to lay blame on her sexual partner, acknowledging to a friar (actually the Duke in disguise) that their "most offenseful act / Was mutually committed."¹²⁶And each woman was ill treated by her prosecutor; while Angelo forgoes death for the "fornicatress,"¹²⁷ instead ordering that she be "[d]ispose[d] of . . . / To some more fitter place"¹²⁸ until she gives birth, Juliet nonetheless

[285]

bewails the falsity of such leniency in light of the penalty given her fiancee: "O injurious love, / That respites me a life whose very comfort / Is still a dying horror!"¹²⁹
    For many of those who first viewed Monica Lewinsky as a victim, their opinion slowly changed as aspects of her story reached the public--through first leaks and then releases from the special prosecutor's office, with whom she was cooperating. More seductress than seducee, Lewinsky had come close to stalking the President after he decided to end their relationship.¹³⁰ Her excuse for this behavior was the depth of feeling she had for the man she called "Handsome";¹³¹ of course, when she was feeling rejected, she sometimes also called him "the Big Creep."¹³²
    It is remarkable that Measure for Measure also contains an analogue for this behavior, in the actions of Mariana, the jilted former fiancee of Angelo, who has pined for her lost love for five years. It takes but little coaxing from the disguised Duke and Isabella to convince Mariana to keep Isabella's assignation with Angelo.¹³³ She is quite ready to sacrifice her maidenhood for the chance of entrapping Angelo, whose "unjust unkindness" to her has made her love him all the more.¹³⁴Mariana compounds this guilt, moral and criminal, by conspiring with the Duke as friar and Isabella that the latter will falsely swear that Angelo had lain with her, thus setting up Mariana's truthful accusation that he had been with her.¹³⁵ So Mariana, like Monica, ignores the dictates of society in order to get her man.
    Mariana commits these crimes because she loves Angelo. Even after the Duke forces Angelo to marry her, she still pleads for his life, though as

[286]

the Duke explains, she could use the property of her executed mate "to buy you a better husband."¹³⁶ Mariana replies,

O my dear lord,
I crave no other, nor no better man.
. . . .
They say, best men are molded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad. So may my husband.¹³⁷

Mariana understands Angelo's faults and is willing to forgive them, in the hope he will improve. In this respect, she again resembles Monica Lewinsky, whose comments even after the scandal implied a wistful hope that there might be a future for her with a retired and perhaps divorced Bill Clinton.¹³⁸
That we can find traces of Monica Lewinsky, as well as Sam Dash, Dick Morris, Larry Flynt, and the House managers of impeachment in Measure for Measure is interesting, but ultimately less important than the reproofs the play suggests for the behavior of Kenneth Starr, one of the major players in Monicagate.¹³⁹ But what of the other major player, President Clinton? What could he have learned from a timely reading of Shakespeare's play?

*** Bill Clinton might have found kindred spirits in two characters in Measure for Measure, Claudio, condemned to death for his sexual indiscretions, and Duke Vincentio, the "President" of Vienna. While a superficial comprehension of both similarities might have salved Clinton's conscience, fully understanding his two analogues would surely have bruised his self-esteem, for the play reveals Claudio as an irresponsible egotist and the Duke as not only the cause of Vienna's woes, but also a conniving and hypocritical trickster, no better than those whom he condemns.

[287]

Claudio is an object of pity throughout the play,¹⁴⁰ and President Clinton, as he grew more entangled in Monicagate, doubtlessly preferred the pity he got from some Americans to the scorn he received from others.¹⁴¹ Claudio's behavior, however, makes pity for him more difficult. His first lines in the play complain of his being paraded through the streets of Vienna in the custody of the Provost, with no mention of the fact that the pregnant Juliet is similarly displayed to the public.¹⁴² When this entourage encounters Claudio's friend Lucio, the prisoner makes a half-hearted attempt to take responsibility for his crime,¹⁴³ but mostly criticizes Angelo, pleads the extenuating circumstance of his and Juliet's imminent marriage, and entreats Lucio to convince Isabella to delay her entry into a convent so that she can persuade Angelo not to carry out the execution.¹⁴⁴ Absorption in one's own problems and the search for any kind of escape from them is perhaps understandable in a man under sentence of death. When the crisis is primarily political such behavior seems less tolerable, which likely explains the exasperation many Americans felt as Bill Clinton evaded responsibility for his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and legalistically rationalized his various attempts to conceal the relationship.¹⁴⁵ Many of those who would have liked to pity the President found themselves instead edging into scorn.
In Measure for Measure Isabella has a similar reaction to her brother's self-centered opportunism. After religious nostrums from a friar (once again the Duke in disguise) cause Claudio to appear to accept his punishment,¹⁴⁶

[288]

he at first agrees with his sister's intended rejection of Angelo's offer to trade her chastity for Claudio's life: "Thou shalt not do't." ¹⁴⁷ But a moment later he begins to recant--"Sure, it is no sin; / Or of the deadly seven it is the least."¹⁴⁸ letting concern for his own well-being blot out any consideration for his sister's religion, morality, or autonomy:

Death is a fearful thing.
. . . .
. . . To die and go we know not where;
. . . .
Sweet sister, let me live:
What sin you do to save a brother's life
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.¹⁴⁹

The request makes Isabella livid, and her tirade to her brother ends, "'Tis best thou diest quickly."¹⁵⁰ After further false ministrations from the Duke as friar, Claudio regrets his behavior toward his departed sister,¹⁵¹ but his plea for life seems much more genuine than this apology.
Claudio's willingness to use his sister recalls President Clinton's apparent recruitment of those around him to assist in concealing his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, most notably his wife. Hillary Clinton's televised proclamation that the Lewinsky allegations were the result of "a vast right-wing conspiracy,"¹⁵² emblematic of the public support she consistently showed her spouse during the early phases of Monicagate, became intensely embarrassing to her after the verification provided by the semen-stained dress and the President's own admissions.¹⁵³ Like Claudio,

[289]

Bill Clinton was willing to allow a loved one to risk such shame in order to save his skin. Again like Claudio, Clinton later expressed regret for forcing his family to endure so much,¹⁵⁴ but as with Claudio, his regret is less telling than his earlier self-serving behavior.
    Despite his sorry actions, Claudio ultimately is saved by the intervention of the Duke. If President Clinton had taken the time to read Measure for Measure while in the throes of Monicagate, perhaps this character would have been more appealing to him as a role model than Claudio. After all, Duke Vincentio manages in the last act to thwart the execution of Claudio, unseat Angelo and marry him to the woman he had wronged, and propose his own marriage to Isabella. If only I could achieve as happy an ending for "the Lewinsky matter," the President might have thought.
    This view of the Duke, as Measure for Measure's hero, is however, quite short-sighted. For Vincentio is the author of the problems he solves in the last act, and his tactics for resolving them are as morally bankrupt as those of the men and women over whom he rules, a laxity he never acknowledges or seeks to improve. If Bill Clinton is similar to the Duke, and his actions before and during Monicagate indicate that he is, reading Measure for Measure during that time would have brought him not comfort, but self-reproach.
    It is after all the Duke's abdication of authority to Angelo that allows the latter to establish a reign of terror in Vienna, which, surprisingly, is exactly the result Duke Vincentio desires. In an early scene the Duke explains to a real friar his reason for appearing to leave Vienna for a time and for placing Angelo in charge. It seems that the Duke has let many laws fall into desuetude, not just the ban on fornication:

We have strict statutes and most biting laws.
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,
Even like an o'ergrown lion in a cave
That goes not out to prey. . . .
. . . .
. . . Our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,

[290]

And liberty plucks Justice by the nose,
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.¹⁵⁵

The Duke has failed to enforce Vienna's tough criminal laws, now crime is out of control, and something must be done. Rather than do it himself, Vincentio selects Angelo as his enforcer, because the Duke fears the impact cracking down on crime would have on his standing with the public: "Sith 'twas my fault to give the people scope, / 'Twould be my tyranny to strike and gall them."¹⁵⁶ Showing remarkably modern political acumen, the Duke sets Angelo up to take the heat for the new get-tough policy:

I have on Angelo imposed the office;
Who may, in the ambush of my name, strike home,
And yet my nature never in the sight
To do it slander.¹⁵⁷

This cynical strategy works, for the Duke gets the crackdown his previous laxity made necessary and also manages to play the magnanimous judge by relieving Claudio and others of the harsh consequences of their crimes, to undoubtedly gratifying public approval.
Reading Measure for Measure, Bill Clinton likely would admire the Duke's political maneuvering, especially his handling of the politically dangerous issue of crime. But if the reading came during the run-up to his impeachment, the President might have cringed at the parallels to his own abdication of authority, which was not a public one like Duke Vincentio's failure to enforce the laws, but a very private dereliction of duty. As many Americans wondered aloud, how could the President carry on an affair with a White House intern knowing that his previous peccadillos with Gennifer Flowers and Paula Jones were already matters of widespread speculation, and that other accusing women like Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick

[291]

might soon add their names to the list?¹⁵⁸ Millions of citizens were willing to admit that Clinton might have strayed from his marriage prior to his election in 1992, but believed that he had thereafter mended his ways because of the manifold political dangers a new liaison would create. The President's stolen moments with Monica Lewinsky were the ultimate dereliction of duty to these supporters, a reckless pursuit of gratification that risked his entire administration. As his wife reportedly shouted when he finally admitted the truth, "You stupid, stupid, stupid bastard. . . . My God, Bill, how could you risk everything for that?"¹⁵⁹
At least Duke Vincentio has a plan to profit from his irresponsible actions, to let Angelo's strict enforcement policy have its day until the Duke intervenes. This strategy unfortunately commits him to lying low, in disguise as a friar, while Angelo inflicts numerous injustices--to Claudio and Juliet, to Isabella and Mariana--and even finds the Duke compounding the injustices in his adopted role. His religious advice to both Claudio and Juliet is harsh, telling the condemned man, "[b]e absolute for death,"¹⁶⁰ and his fiancee, "your sin was of heavier kind than his."¹⁶¹ The Duke, as friar, leaves Juliet believing she has received a holy man's blessing¹⁶² and lies to Claudio about Angelo's motives in propositioning Isabella, supporting his falsehood by claiming to breach the sanctity of the confessional: "Angelo had never the purpose to corrupt her; only he hath made an assay of her virtue . . . . She . . . hath made him that gracious denial which he is most glad to receive. I am confessor to Angelo, and I know this to be true."¹⁶³ Trading on his standing as a man of religion in order to have private conversations with both Isabella and Mariana, Angelo's other victims,¹⁶⁴the Duke further uses his usurped role to convince them both to agree to substituting Mariana for Isabella in her illicit encounter with Angelo,¹⁶⁵ a

[292]

ploy of such dubious morality that one set of editors feels compelled to apologize for the lack of "absolute ethical consistency" in the Duke's character.¹⁶⁶ Rather than being a flaw, this inconsistency marks Vincentio as all too human, willing to sacrifice the virtue of two young women in order to pursue his planned comeuppance for Angelo. The Duke obliquely acknowledges the grimy machinations his strategy has necessitated in a soliloquy, while offstage Isabella persuades Mariana to lie with Angelo:

O place and greatness, millions of false eyes
Are stuck upon thee! volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious quests
Upon thy doings! thousand escapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies!¹⁶⁷

While ostensibly a complaint about the perils of being in the public eye, the placement of this soliloquy in the scene in which the Duke procures Mariana as Angelo's bedmate and Isabella as her accomplice suggests another meaning: If only the hijinks-imagining public knew what low conduct "place and greatness" require!
Almost four centuries after Measure for Measure was written, place and greatness still demand low conduct. Once Bill Clinton committed himself to a strategy of denial regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, he also used the prestige of his office, as well as the ties of friendship, to inveigle others into participating in that strategy, to their detriment. His adviser and golf buddy Vernon Jordan risked his considerable reputation in seeking employment for the President's former girlfriend.¹⁶⁸ Betty Currie, Clinton's longtime secretary, skirted obstruction of justice and perjury charges while retrieving presidential gifts and

[293]

confirming her boss' recollection of Oval Office encounters.¹⁶⁹ And aide Sidney Blumenthal apparently spread gossip about Lewinsky in the hope that what the President had told him was true.¹⁷⁰ All three would end up as grand jury witnesses and potential criminal targets because of what the President apparently asked them to do.
For these friends of Clinton, as well as for Clinton himself, the principal criminal charges to fear were obstruction of justice and perjury. Remarkably, these are the same crimes the Duke as friar induces others to commit after Angelo's assignation with Isabella (really Mariana) does not result in Claudio's freedom; in order to stage-manage that result, as well as to expose Angelo, marry him to Mariana, and curry favor with the Duke's intended bride Isabella, Vincentio corrupts Claudio's custodian, the Provost, and further enmeshes Isabella and Mariana in his criminal machinations, all the while cruelly deceiving each of his victims.
The Provost is probably the most upstanding character in the play, sympathetic to Claudio but nevertheless bound to follow the orders of Angelo; as the Duke himself notes, "This is a gentle provost: seldom when / The steeled jailer is the friend of men."¹⁷¹ Despite this high opinion, Duke Vincentio abuses the Provost repeatedly. First the masquerading Duke lies about Angelo, complimenting him when the Provost calls his superior "bitter": "[Angelo's] life is paralleled / Even with the stroke and line of his great justice."¹⁷² When Angelo shows his "great justice" by ordering the Provost to execute Claudio forthwith and Barnardine a few hours later, and to send the former's head to Angelo,¹⁷³ the Duke, as friar, asks the Provost

[294]

to disobey the orders regarding Claudio. The Provost balks at this obstruction of justice, claiming both that this crime might result in his execution and that it would in any event violate "my oath,"¹⁷⁴ the covenant he has made with God faithfully to perform the duties of his office. Rather than reveal himself as the Duke (which would have relieved the Provost's concerns on both counts), Vincentio continues his charade as a man of religion, falsely citing "the vow of mine order"¹⁷⁵ and "the saint whom I profess"¹⁷⁶ as reasons why the Provost should follow this friar's directions. As a clincher the Duke, as friar, shows the Provost a letter in the Duke's handwriting saying he will return to Vienna within two days, which apparently convinces the Provost to accept the friar's suggestion. In the same breath, however, Vincentio mentions certain misleading letters that have been sent to Angelo regarding the Duke's travels, which should have alerted the Provost to the possibility that the letter shown him was also false.¹⁷⁷
Suborned into obstructing the justice lawfully decreed by Angelo, the extent of the Provost's fall at the behest of the Duke becomes apparent when his original plan, to send to Angelo the head of Barnardine rather than that of Claudio, fails because of Barnardine's refusal to be executed.¹⁷⁸ With the Duke at a loss how to proceed, the Provost suggests offering Angelo the head of yet another prisoner, the pirate Ragozine, who had that morning died in jail. The Duke immediately agrees, and the Provost soon appears onstage with the head under his arm, which he himself takes to Angelo.179 Through deception and appeals to false and apparently fraudulent authority, the Duke has reduced the Provost to a wrongdoer, grimy with the blood of his crime. It is little wonder then that the jailer readily agrees to another obstruction of justice, when the Duke, as friar, asks him to delay the execution of Barnardine for a few days. "I am your free dependant,"¹⁸⁰ the Provost blithely replies.
Having persuaded the Provost to violate his oath of office, Duke Vincentio then turns to the task of convincing Isabella and Mariana to violate another solemn oath: to tell the truth in legal proceedings. The

[295]

Duke's plan, carried out in Act 5, is that when Angelo is publicly confronted, Isabella will first accuse him (falsely) of having lain with her, and then Mariana will testify (truthfully) that Angelo was instead with her on the night in question.¹⁸¹ This plan, which makes Isabella a perjurer, subject to penalties from both God and man, plainly makes her very uncomfortable. As she says to Mariana:

To speak so indirectly I am loath.
I would say the truth; but to accuse him so,
That is your part. Yet I am advised to do it;
He says, to veil full purpose.¹⁸²

Mariana replies in a single line: "Be ruled by him."¹⁸³ But it is enough to label her an accomplice and conspirator to Isabella's false swearing and thus a perjurer herself, despite the truthfulness of her own testimony.¹⁸⁴
So the Duke suborns both women to perjury; further, he deceives them to make them more willing to participate in his plot. Disguised as the friar, and once again capitalizing on this usurped status,¹⁸⁵ he tells Isabella that her brother is dead, in part so that he can counsel the grief-stricken, angry woman:

[P]ace your wisdom
In that good path that I would wish it go,
And you shall have . . .
. . . revenges to your heart.¹⁸⁶

[296]

Isabella is thus deceived into doing the Duke's will. Additionally, this very promise to Isabella constitutes a deception of Mariana. The Duke, as friar, initially implied to Mariana that their goal in substituting her for Isabella at the tryst with Angelo was to win him as Mariana's husband,¹⁸⁷but now the friar promises Isabella, out of Mariana's earshot, that Claudio's sister may have her vengeance on Angelo, a promise the Duke threatens to carry out in Act 5, over Mariana's protests.¹⁸⁸
Deception, perjury, obstruction of justice--these are not merely the wrongs President Clinton allegedly urged others to commit, but also the charges brought against him personally. Like the Duke's usurpation of clerical status to deceive those around him, Clinton assumed the stance of a wrongfully accused man and used this pose to mislead the country for several months.¹⁸⁹ Worse than the Duke, who merely solicited perjury, Clinton twice gave testimony under oath, the legality of which can be justified only by trotting out defenses like lack of materiality¹⁹⁰ or by torturing the meaning of terms like "sexual intercourse" and even of simple English words such as "is."¹⁹¹ And like the Duke confronted with Angelo's excesses, Bill Clinton responded to the overzealousness of Kenneth Starr not straightforwardly, but with a series of denials and deflections that matched the popular, if not the legal, conception of obstruction of justice.¹⁹²

[297]

A close reading of Measure for Measure before or during all this behavior might have suggested to the former President a more circumspect course of conduct.¹⁹³
But probably not, for the Duke himself learns little from his own misbehavior, and why should we expect more from Clinton? After the Duke's disguise is revealed in Act 5, he continues the conduct that created his problems in the first place. He maintains his deceptions of Isabella, that her brother is dead,¹⁹⁴ while switching his deception of Mariana by now threatening to execute Angelo,¹⁹⁵ all of which is intended as a test of the sympathy of both, which they pass by pleading for Angelo's life.¹⁹⁶ As rewards, Mariana gets Angelo, and Isabella gets her brother, plus a marriage proposal from the Duke.¹⁹⁷ Along with deception, Vincentio also reverts to an older bad habit, reinstituting the lax enforcement attitude that made abdicating in favor of Angelo advisable. The Duke pardons not only those whom he led into wrongdoing,¹⁹⁸ and those like Escalus and Claudio whose wrongs were trivial,¹⁹⁹ but also Angelo²⁰⁰ and even the murderer Barnardine.²⁰¹At the play's close, it is not difficult to imagine the whole cycle of permissiveness followed by an overreacting harshness playing itself out once again, for Vincentio seems not to have learned anything from the tumultuous events he has overseen. Whether the same will be true of Bill Clinton, only time will tell.

*** The Duke is inconstant even in his clemency, announcing near the end of Act 5, "yet here's one in place I cannot pardon,"²⁰² referring to Lucio, the man-about-town who incensed Vincentio with comments about him, which

[298]

Lucio let slip when he thought he was speaking only to a friar.²⁰³ The Duke first decrees that Lucio should marry the prostitute who bore his child, and then be whipped and hanged, but ultimately relents, requiring instead the marriage and imprisonment.²⁰⁴ So the harshest punishment in the play comes neither for abuse of power nor for murder, but for "slandering a prince."²⁰⁵
    But the character of Lucio serves more functions in the play than to show the Duke's arbitrariness in enforcing the law. Lucio convinces Isabella to advocate for her brother and assists her in that project. The two characters are related in another respect, for Lucio claims knowledge of Duke Vincentio that Isabella ought to consider while deciding whether to accept his marriage proposal. Thus combined in their relationships to both Claudio and the Duke, in whom Bill Clinton might have seen himself, Lucio and Isabella therefore could have provided models for another player in Monicagate, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
    Lucio comes to the aid of his friend Claudio, as Hillary supported her beleaguered husband in the initial stages of Monicagate. Despite Lucio's preference for low life and low talk, at Claudio's urging the boulevardier travels to the nunnery Isabella is about to enter and overcomes her considerable doubts about lobbying Angelo on her brother's behalf. When Isabella's initial pleas to Vienna's new governor seem rather tepid, Lucio's asides spur her to greater eloquence.²⁰⁶ Similarly, Hillary Clinton's early reaction to the scandal was not only to speak publicly about it, but also to strategize behind the scenes to orchestrate the White House's response.²⁰⁷
    Lucio, having set in motion the interaction between Isabella and Angelo that drives the main plot of Measure for Measure, subsequently becomes involved with the Duke, the principal manipulator of that plot. Lucio encounters the Duke in his friar's disguise as each confronts and dismisses the bawd Pompey on his way to prison.²⁰⁸ Left alone, Lucio asks, "What news, friar, of the Duke?,"²⁰⁹ and in the ensuing conversation Lucio criticizes Angelo for his harshness toward Claudio by saying that the absent Duke would never have ordered such a punishment: "Ere he would have

[299]

hanged a man for the getting a hundred bastards, he would have paid for the nursing a thousand. He had some feeling of the sport; he knew the service, and that instructed him to mercy."²¹⁰When the friar doubts this latter characterization, Lucio, claiming to be "an inward"²¹¹ of the Duke--"I know him, and I love him"²¹²--labels Vincentio an occasional drunk and a former libertine. "The Duke . . . would eat mutton on Fridays"²¹³ using "mutton" as "slang for a loose woman,"²¹⁴ according to one set of commentators--"He's now past it; yet . . . he would mouth with a beggar, though she smelt brown bread and garlic . . . ."²¹⁵ These charges anger the Duke, as friar, as they do when Lucio abbreviatedly repeats them in a subsequent encounter, referring to Vincentio as "the old fantastical Duke of dark corners,"²¹⁶ "a better woodman than thou takest him for,"²¹⁷ with "woodman" a salacious pun for "pursuer of women."²¹⁸
Shakespeare adopts a studied agnosticism regarding Lucio's assertions about the Duke. Because he paints Lucio as a boaster who does not recognize the Duke in disguise, one is tempted to believe that Lucio is lying about his knowledge of the Duke, who as friar repeatedly challenges Lucio's statements.²¹⁹ But Escalus, who truly is an "inward" of the Duke, also does not recognize him in disguise,²²⁰ and Shakespeare gives Lucio a few lines regarding the Duke which we know to be correct. In commenting on Claudio's crime, Lucio says, "The Duke yet would have dark deeds darkly answered: he would never bring them to light,"²²¹ which is a good synopsis of one of Vincentio's many options, forcing Angelo to marry Mariana in exchange for not revealing his criminal proposition to Isabella. And Lucio summarizes the Duke as "[a] very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow,"²²² an apt description considering the many character flaws he shows during the play.

[300]

Further, there is a bit of evidence to support Lucio's allegations of previous sexual frolics. Act 1, scene 3, begins in the middle of a conversation between the Duke, in his own guise, and a real friar, with Vincentio responding,

No, holy father, throw away that thought:
Believe not that the dribbling dart of love
Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee
To give me secret harbor hath a purpose
More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
Of burning youth.²²³

Why would a religious leader, however circumspectly, ask the Duke of Vienna whether he seeks a friar's disguise in order to satisfy "the dribbling dart of love,"²²⁴ unless there were some precedent for the suspicion? In support of this suspicion is a passing comment by Mariana, that the Duke as friar has "often" comforted her,²²⁵ implying previous ducal masquerades and even questioning the purity of the Duke's intentions regarding Mariana.²²⁶
Measure for Measure thus leaves open to inference whether Lucio's tales of the Duke's amorous adventures are truths or lies, or something in between, as Vincentio's own comment to Lucio suggests: "You speak unskillfully; or if your knowledge be more, it is much darkened in your malice."²²⁷ A similar statement could be made about Hillary Clinton's explanations of her husband's amorous adventures, not the fact of them (which can hardly be open to question), but their cause. A desire to please women, psychological abuse as a child, the genetic and environmental endowment of a roving father--all have been offered as excuses for Bill

[301]

Clinton's behavior.²²⁸ Yet one suspects the partiality of these assessments: Are they totally groundless lies, meant to cover, either for political or for intensely personal reasons, the utter failings of one's spouse? Or, more likely, do they contain grains of truth, some "knowledge," inevitably "darkened," however, by the odd combination of love, malice, and politics that this unique marriage has generated? At bottom, these are questions not for you or me, but for Hillary Clinton--questions a reading of Shakespeare's play might help to answer.
Another source of potential enlightenment for the former First Lady is Isabella, who grapples with contrary attitudes toward her condemned brother, and likely ends the play confronting similarly conflicted feelings toward the Duke. Regarding her brother, Isabella condemns him harshly when Claudio asks her to save his life by submitting to Angelo--indeed, more harshly than she condemns Angelo:

O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is't not a kind of incest to take life
From thine own sister's shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother played my father fair!
For such a warped slip of wilderness
Ne'er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die, perish! Might but my bending down
Reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.
I'll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.²²⁹

Not content merely to spurn Claudio's suggestion, Isabella nears hysteria in her denunciation, even to the point of questioning her mother's virtue, in order to charge her brother with bastardy in addition to cowardice, vice, and a form of incest.²³⁰ But later, when Isabella thinks Claudio dead at the hands of a treacherous Angelo, her uncontrolled hatred turns toward

[302]

this man, for doing to her brother what she herself had wished: "O I will to him and pluck out his eyes! / . . . . / Unhappy Claudio! wretched Isabel! / Injurious world! most damned Angelo!"²³¹

Even this feeling, however, succumbs to Isabella's fickleness. After publicly charging Angelo as "a murderer,"²³² "an adulterous thief," ²³³ "a virgin-violator,"²³⁴ and "the wicked'st caitiff on the ground,"²³⁵ and ranting for "justice, justice, justice, justice," ²³⁶ Isabella relents after Angelo's shotgun marriage to Mariana, joining her in pleading for her new husband's life, even though Isabella still believes Angelo has killed her brother. Her brief argument on Angelo's behalf is quite strange. It begins in vanity--"I partly think / A due sincerity governed his deeds, / Till he did look on me."²³⁷ shows lingering contempt for Claudio--"My brother had but justice"²³⁸ and concludes with a shameless and unconvincing legalism:

For Angelo,
His act did not o'ertake his bad intent,
And must be buried as an intent
That perished by the way.²³⁹

Isabella's wavering attitude toward Angelo thus mirrors her similarly fluctuating attitude toward her brother. She is beset by a tumult of conflicting feelings.
The audience can only imagine how much this tumult intensifies when in the play's final moments, the Duke reveals a living Claudio to Isabella and simultaneously proposes marriage.²⁴⁰ Isabella has no lines after this double revelation, but we can guess at her mixture of happiness with

[303]

Vincentio for conniving to save her brother's life and anger for the pain the Duke's deceptions have caused her. The standard finale for the play implies her joyous acceptance of Vincentio's proposal, but some Twentieth Century productions have ended otherwise (with Isabella storming offstage in one, disgusted by the prospect of marriage to the Duke).²⁴¹ Perhaps the best denouement is the open-ended one Shakespeare provides, with Isabella facing a choice, immobilized by her unruly passions.
Of course, there has been no public revelation by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of her true feelings about her husband and all he has put her through; she is far too careful a politician for that. But we can surmise that her attitudes toward the former President are as contradictory as those Isabella declares regarding her brother and those we infer she has for the Duke.²⁴² In the privacy of her own mind, Hillary must condemn Bill with all the fury Isabella heaps on Claudio, but she must also revile her husband's attackers as Isabella denounces Angelo. And perhaps she too has moments when she can sympathize with those attackers just a bit, as Isabella ultimately shows mercy to Angelo.
Reading Measure for Measure might help the former First Lady sort out some of these conflicts, and it could also frame the ultimate question she must face: not, as with Isabella, whether to marry a man with significant character flaws, but whether to remain married to such a man now that they have left the White House. Hillary Rodham Clinton would likely approach this decision with a more balanced frame of mind than the near hysteria Isabella repeatedly discloses. However, this very carefulness, the opposite of Isabella's passion, might be just as disabling--and might reflect a character flaw Senator Clinton would do well to recognize in herself.

[304]

*** Thinking about how acquaintance (or reacquaintance) with Shakespeare's Measure for Measure might have affected, or might still affect, the players in this scandal illuminates a simple lesson. Great literature portrays worlds in which we can recognize our fellows and ourselves and learn from the recognition. How much we learn and what use we make of our new knowledge will vary from reader to reader, but the opportunity to benefit is always there.

[305]

ENDNOTES

* A version of this Article was presented on October 29, 1999, in Pittsburgh as part of an American Legal Studies Association panel discussion. Thanks go to thank Bruce Rockwood for organizing and moderating the panel, Ervene Gulley for commenting formally on my presentation, and Jim Elkins and David Papke for their remarks in the general discussion following the presentation. Other helpful comments, on an early draft, came from Stuart Green, Greg McCann, and Bill Salzwedel. I have also profited greatly from discussing Measure for Measure with the students who have taken my law and literature seminar. Of course, the errors that remain after all this assistance are entirely my responsibility.

** Professor, Stetson University College of Law.

1. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, MEASURE FOR MEASURE (Louis B. Wright & Virginia A. LaMar eds., 1965).

2. See Ervene Gulley, "Dressed in a Little Brief Authority": Law as Theater in Measure for Measure, in LAW AND LITERATURE PERSPECTIVES 53, 53 (Bruce L. Rockwood ed., 1996).

3. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 1, sc. 1, l. 3. See generally Frank Kermode, Justice and Mercy in Shakespeare, 33 HOUS. L. REV. 1155, 1164 (1996). Regarding the obscurity of the opening lines, see Shakespeare, supra note 1, at editor note accompanying act 1, sc. 1, ll. 3-9. "Evidently a line, or part of one, has been lost in this passage, since the phrasing seems cryptic and elliptical even for this play, which has many cryptic passages." Id.

4. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 1, sc. 1, ll. 11-13.

5. Id. at ll. 44-49. "First in question" probably means "senior." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 48.

6. See id. at ll. 28-43.

7. See id. at act 1, sc. 2, ll. 171-173.

8. Id. at l. 121.

9. Id. at l. 167.

10. Id. at ll. 163-166.

11. Id. at ll. 173, 175.

12. Id. at act 1, sc. 4, ll. 63-64.

13. Id. at act 3, sc. 2, ll. 106-113. Lucio goes on to call Angelo "a motion generative," id. at ll. 113-114, which the Wright-LaMar notes explain with "i.e., no more capable of generation than a puppet. Motion is the usual Elizabethan word for 'puppet.'" Id. at editor note accompanying ll. 113-114.

14. See His Reach Knows No Bounds, NAT'L L.J., Dec. 30, 1996, at B12 [hereinafter His Reach] ("Peers said he excelled at the lawyer's eternal need to sublimate personal beliefs to the performance of one's work.").

15. See, e.g., Michael J. Gorman, . . . Or Is the Probe Just a Partisan Fraud?, NAT'L L.J., Sept. 14, 1998, at A20 (letter):

    Kenneth Starr is a politically biased, puritanical, sex-obsessed voyeur who is convinced that God sent him to destroy our heathen president.
    Just as the law regards obscenity, Mr. Starr is utterly without redeeming social value . . . .
    . . . He will never give up the search for the Holy Grail--President Clinton's head on a platter . . . .

See also Marie Cocco, The Fury of a Prosecutor Scorned, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Nov. 22, 1998, at 8D ("Starr believes his own purity is as complete as Clinton's perfidy."); Maureen Dowd, It's Time to Dump the Persecutor, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Feb. 11, 1999, at 15A ("Beyond Starr's shy smile lurks the heart of the undead. He comes back and back and back for more blood . . . ."); cf. Alan Brinkley, How History Will Rate Kenneth Starr, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Feb. 10, 1999, at 16A (comparing Starr to Anthony Comstock, "the late 19th-century moral crusader, who gave his name to a series of state and national laws regulating 'obscenity,'" among others).
Long after writing the comparison in the text and the supporting footnote material, I discovered that lawyer-author Richard Dooling had made exactly the same analogy in a column in LEGAL TIMES. See Richard Dooling, Dead Perfect: Kenneth Starr's Impeccable Professionalism Doomed His Congressional Performance, LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 23, 1998, at 25 (quoting the "snow-broth," "urine," "stockfishes," and "sea-maid" lines).

16. See His Reach, supra note 14 (While selecting Starr as 1996's "Lawyer of the Year," the publication noted vigorous opposition to his appointment as independent prosecutor, because "he was too ambitious and active in Republican politics to investigate a Democratic president," and "was widely believed to covet a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court--something only a Republican president was likely to provide."); Abbe D. Lowell, Starr Flap Shows Need for Reform, NAT'L L.J., May 13, 1996, at A19:
Critics have charged that Kenneth W. Starr has changed from the upstanding former federal appeals judge, solicitor general and big-firm litigator to the K Street equivalent of an unethical ambulance chaser because of his being both the independent counsel investigating the Whitewater issues and a lawyer who continues to attract and represent private clients. . . . The argument is that Mr. Starr has at least an appearance of a conflict of interest because some of his clients pursue positions contrary to those of the Clinton administration, members of whom are the subjects of his investigation.
See also Was Reno Misled by Starr's Office?, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Feb. 10, 1999, at 5A; Fading Starr, NAT'L L.J., Mar. 3, 1997, at A14; John Leibowitz & Paul Bock, Starr's Connections Call Role into Question, NAT'L L.J., Feb. 17, 1997(letter); His Reach, supra note 14 (citing Starr's representation of the tobacco industry and of a conservative foundation that funded "Clinton-hating groups and publications"); Harvey Berkman, Counsel Conflicts Decried, NAT'L L.J., Mar. 25, 1996, at A6.

17. See, e.g., Michael J. Gaynor, Dash, Not Starr, Is the Partisan, LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 30, 1998, at 27 (letter); Robert Schmidt & T.R. Goldman, Kenneth Starr's Legacy: He Changed the Job of Special Counsel. Will He Spur Reform?, LEGAL TIMES, Jan. 26, 1998, at 1 (quoting Starr and others).

18. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, ll. 1-4; see id. at ll. 37-38.

19. Id. at ll. 18-19, 29-33; see id. at ll. 5-17.

20. Id. at ll. 19-25. The fraud prosecution of a prominent Florida minister at approximately the same time as Monicagate matched Angelo's description almost exactly: The foreman of the grand jury that indicted the minister was subsequently convicted for drug transactions during his jury service. See Foreman of Lyons Grand Jury Sentenced, ST. PETERSBURG TIME, May 18, 1999, at 3B; Indictment of Lyons Is Upheld, ST. PETERSBURG TIME, Oct. 31, 1998, at 3B.

21. See Maureen Dowd, Obsession Not Limited to One, MILWAUKEE J. SENTINEL, Sept. 26, 1998, at 10. This famous column, beginning "He couldn't stop thinking about the thong underwear," proceeded through an apparent description of President Clinton's recurring thought patterns regarding Monica Lewinsky, only to end with the revelation that "He was Ken Starr." Id. Dowd thus brilliantly demonstrated the equal obsessions of Clinton and Starr and their equal responsibility for the national crisis these obsessions engendered. More than any other media commentator, Dowd captured the bizarre essence of Monicagate, which hopefully justifies the frequency of her citation in these footnotes.

22. See B.J. Palermo, Whitewater Defendant Jailed in the "Big House": McDougal's Lawyer Says She's a Victim of Collusion, NAT'L L.J., Apr. 7, 1997, at A1 (quoting McDougal's brother: "'This is about Susan McDougal not making up lies to save herself,' . . . . 'This matter is about . . . getting the president . . . .'"); Harvey Silvergate & Andrew Good, Starr Teachers, CHAMPION, Aug. 1999, at 28, 30. See also David E. Rovella, Is Criminal Contempt Overkill?, NAT'L L.J., May 11, 1998, at A6; McDougal's Lawyer Tells How He Will "Try" Starr, NAT'L L.J., May 11, 1998, at A6.

23. See Hubbell's New Indictment, NAT'L L.J., May 11, 1998, at A8 (quoting Hubbell: Starr's office "'. . . can indict my dog, they can indict my cat, but I'm not going to lie about the president. . . .'"); Silvergate & Good, supra note 22, at 30.

24. See Harvey Silvergate, Prosecutors Tread Where Defenders Daren't Go, NAT'L L.J., Feb. 16, 1998, at A21; Silvergate & Good, supra note 22, at 29.

25. See Richard Ben-Veniste, Comparisons Can Be Odious, Mr. Starr, NAT'L L.J., Dec. 21, 1998, at A21; Timothy J. Burger, What Ever Happened to Leak Probes?, LEGAL TIMES, May 4, 1998, at 10; A Rose by Any Other Name . . ., LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 2, 1998, at 3. See also David E. Rovella, Lies, Not Leaks, Real Starr Issue?, NAT'L L.J., June 29, 1998, at A1 (discussing whether Starr's misstatements to government officials regarding grand jury leaks might constitute violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (Supp. 2000)).

26. See Harvey Silvergate, Clinton v. Starr v. Clinton May Make Court Act, NAT'L L.J., Apr. 27, 1998, at A21. See also David E. Rovella, Turning the Tables: Did Ken Starr Obstruct Justice?, NAT'L L.J., Mar. 16, 1998, at A4 (noting a lawyer's allegation that Starr knowingly allowed perjured testimony while representing General Motors).

27. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 2, ll. 167-169; see also id. at ll. 82-84 ("If he had been as you, and you as he, / You would have slipt like him; but he, like you, / Would not have been so stern."); ll. 97-99 ("How would you be / If He, which is the top of judgment, should / But judge you as you are?").

28. Id. at l. 103. See RICHARD A. POSNER, LAW AND LITERATURE 124 (rev. ed. 1998) [hereinafter POSNER, LAW AND LITERATURE]; John D. Eure, Note, Shakespeare and the Legal Process, 61 VA. L. REV. 390, 411, 421-22 (1975).

29. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 2, ll. 115125, 127-132.

30. Id. at ll. 145-150. The Wright-LaMar notes paraphrase "glassy essence" as "fragile soul; the soul's proneness to error." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 148.

31. See id. at ll. 201, 208.

32. Id. at ll. 213-215, 223-227.

33. Id. at act 2, sc. 4, l. 35.

34. Id. at ll. 36-38.

35. Id. at ll. 57-60.

36. Id. at ll. 66-67.

37. Id. at ll. 70-71.

38. Id. at ll. 119-120. This portion of the scene might remind anyone familiar with the law school classroom of an exchange between a professor and a student. For example, when Angelo catches Isabella in an inconsistency, she pleads the frailty of her sex, to which Angelo responds that if she is a woman and therefore frail, she should succumb to his arguments and inferentially to his proposition, which he immediately discloses. See id. at ll. 124-151.

39. Id. at ll. 154-157.

40. Id. at ll. 166-168.

41. Id. at ll. 170-171.

42. Id. at l. 169.

43. Id. at ll. 178-182.

44. See Anthony Lewis, Monica's Real Story Is About Starr, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Mar. 9, 1999, at 17A [hereinafter Lewis, Monica's Real Story]; Tom Schoenberg, Tables Turn for Frank Carter: Burden of Proof Shifts for Lewinsky's First Lawyer, LEGAL TIMES, Sept. 28, 1998, at 1; Sam Skolnik, The Year of the Prosecutor: Law Enforcement's Might Was on Display, and It Wasn't Always a Pretty Sight, LEGAL TIMES, Dec. 21, 1998, at 8.

45. See Scott Turow, Starr Steps over the Line, Again, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Nov. 22, 1998, at 3D. See also Sam Skolnik, Starr Gets Credit Data on Lewinsky, Others, LEGAL TIMES, Apr. 27, 1998, at 1.

46. See Carrie Johnson, Fading Starr?, LEGAL TIMES, May 3, 1999, at 6; Roger Parloff, Steele Prosecution Lacked Mettle: Weak Facts, Weaker Witnesses, LEGALTIMES, May 10, 1999, at 1; Silvergate & Good, supra note 22, at 30-31; Skolnik, supra note 45, at 1; Steele Wheels . . ., LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 30, 1998, at 3. See infra text accompanying note 158.

47. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 2, l. 146.

48. Id. at l. 145.

49. Id. at l. 147. See supra text accompanying note 30.

50. Id. at act 2, sc. 4, l. 132. See supra note 38. See generally Eure, supra note 28, at 422-23.

51. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 1, ll. 41-43. The Wright-LaMar notes paraphrase "In action all of precept" as "instructing me by action." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 42.

52. Regarding the "bed trick," see generally ROSALIND MILES, THE PROBLEM OF MEASURE FOR MEASURE: A HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION 236-45 (1976); Ernest Schanzer, The Problem Plays of Shakespeare: A Study of Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra 108-11 (1963), reprinted in MEASURE FOR MEASURE: TEXT, SOURCE, AND CRITICISM 241, 242-44 (Rolf Soellner & Samuel Bertsche eds., 1966); MARC SHELL, THE END OF KINSHIP: 'MEASURE FOR MEASURE', INCEST, AND THE IDEAL OF UNIVERSAL SIBLINGHOOD 145-48 (1988).

53. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 2, ll. 136-137; see id. at ll. 134-140.

54. See Ralph Drury Martin, Lewinsky's Legal Shuffle: Can Monica Start Over?, LEGAL TIMES, June 8, 1998, at 23.

55. See Maureen Dowd, Tawdry, but Hardly a High Crime, DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Sept. 19, 1998, at 27A [hereinafter Dowd, Tawdry] ("a 445-page Harold Robbins novel").

56. See Harvey Berkman, Starr Performs for House and All That Jazz, NAT'L L.J., Nov. 30, 1998, at A1 (describing an e-mail from a student in Dash's criminal law class at Georgetown; the student "said Mr. Dash had told his class that Mr. Starr had 'abused the office of the Independent Counsel' and 'obviously did not take my advice' that the independent counsel was not statutorily authorized to opine on the political question of whether evidence collected warrants impeachment"). See also Samuel Dash, Don't Kill the Counsel Law, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Feb. 18, 1999, at 17A (recommending removal of the independent counsel's authority to report to Congress regarding impeachment, which "has been dangerously blown out of proportion"). See generally Turow, supra note 45, at 3D.

57. And his wife's. See Maureen Dowd, Starr Still on Revenge Autopilot, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., June 15, 1999, at 15A ("Kenneth Starr and Hillary Clinton, it seems, have some unfinished business. Of course, with Starr, business is always unfinished.").

58. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 4, l. 33.

59. Id. at act 5, sc. 1, ll. 38-42. Partisans of Clarence Thomas similarly questioned the sanity of his female accuser, Anita Hill. See, e.g., DAVID BROCK, THE REAL ANITA HILL: THE UNTOLD STORY (1993).

60. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 5, sc. 1, ll. 246-252. When the Duke, in a friar's cloak, earlier relates these circumstances to Isabella, he emphasizes the loss of the dowry as Angelo's motivation, calling the "discoveries of dishonor" a "pretense." Id. at act 3, sc. 1, l. 253.

61. Id. at act 5, sc. 1, ll. 269-272. The Wright-LaMar notes gloss "informal" as "less than normal; deluded." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 269.

62. Id. at ll. 417-418; see also id. at ll. 537-538.

63. See Maureen Dowd, Digging the Juiciest Dirt, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, Mar. 2, 1998, at 9A (discussing Starr's subpoenaing of Sidney Blumenthal after he leaked criticisms of Starr's investigative tactics).

64. See Lewis, Monica's Real Story, supra note 44, at 17A.

65. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, l. 139.

66. See id. at ll. 196-255. The wisdom of Escalus' mercy is debatable. Froth, a man of independent income ("fourscore pounds a year," id. at ll. 198-199), is a good bet not to reoffend, but Pompey is a procurer (a "bawd," id. at l. 222), who promises in an aside immediately after his warning to continue his profession. See id. at ll. 256-259. To his credit Escalus, while speaking of Claudio's case, summarizes the possible criticism of his leniency to Pompey: "Mercy is not itself that oft looks so; / Pardon is still the nurse of second woe." Id. at ll. 287-288. Even acknowledging this criticism, Escalus' resolution of the dispute between Pompey and Froth and Elbow seems better than the one Angelo proposes.
In adjudicating another matter, that of Mistress Overdone, "a bawd of eleven years' continuance," Escalus shows that he is not always lenient, sentencing her to prison. Id. at act 3, sc. 2, l. 199; see also id. at ll. 193-209.

67. Id. at act 2, sc. 1, ll. 188-195. See generally Eure, supra note 28, at 420-21.

68. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, l. 269.

69. See id. at ll. 260-278.

70. See id. at ll. 5-17, 283-290; see supra text accompanying note 19. But cf. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 3, sc. 2, ll. 210-214, 254-258 (comments slightly critical of Angelo).

71. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 3, sc. 2, ll. 265-272.

72. See generally Marvin D. Miller, A Conversation with Sam Dash, CHAMPION, June 1999, at 22.

73. See Robert L. Jackson, Dash, Notable Democrat, Joins Whitewater Probers, L.A. TIMES, Oct. 6, 1994, at 14; Susan Schmidt, Whitewater Counsel Appoints Dash, of Watergate Fame, as Ethics Adviser, WASH. POST, Oct. 6, 1994, at A14; Starr Takes Cover, TIME, Oct. 17, 1994, at 17.

74. See supra text accompanying note 56.

75. See supra text accompanying notes 59-61.

76. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 5, sc. 1, ll. 307-308, 314.

77. Id. at ll. 343, 348-349. According to Wright and LaMar, "touse" means "rack" or "tear." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 248.

78. See id. at ll. 385-388. "Giglets" are "light women." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 387.

79. See id. at l. 402.

80. One might include Starr's other ethics adviser, Ronald Rotunda, in this category. See He Said, He Said . . ., LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 30, 1998, at 3 (discussing the potential legal ramifications of Rotunda's public comment about White House aide Sidney Blumenthal, "Everybody in this office knew since last February that Sid Blumenthal was lying"). See also Anthony Lewis, Hate Motivates Untrue Charges, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Mar. 28, 2000, at 13A.

81. See Maureen Dowd, Clintonites Fine with Sacrificing Accusers, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, Feb. 2, 1998, at 11A [hereinafter Dowd, Clintonites] (quoting Morris in a radio interview, "'let's assume, OK, that his sexual relationship with Hillary is not all it's supposed to be, let's assume that some of the allegations that Hillary--sometimes not necessarily being into regular sex with men--might be true'").

82. See Maureen Dowd, Adrift on the Ship of Fools, TULSA WORLD, Dec. 23, 1998, at 19.

83. See generally Maria Aristodemou, Law and Desire in Measure for Measure, 9 L. & CRITIQUE 117, 129 (1998).

84. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, ll. 227-234.

85. Id. at ll. 236-237.

86. Id. at ll. 241-245. In a sly dig at Escalus, Pompey adds, "If you live to see this come to pass, say Pompey told you so." Id. at ll. 245-246. The conditional clause refers either to Escalus' old age, or to the likelihood that he would be executed for fornication, despite his age. See generally Eure, supra note 28, at 411, 414-16.

87. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 2, ll. 1017. Regarding Barnardine's status as a murderer, see id. at ll. 62, 142-153.

88. Id. at ll. 49-51.

89. Id. at act 4, sc. 3, l. 18.

90. Id. at ll. 1-19.

91. Id. at act 4, sc. 2, ll. 156-159, 163-166. The WrightLaMar notes explain Barnardine's access to alcohol even though in jail: "Instead of being boarded at the state's expense, prisoners could buy any food or other comforts they could afford." Id. at editor note accompanying l. 163.

92. Id. at act 4, sc. 3, ll. 42-43.

93. Id. at ll. 54-55, 59-60.

94. Id. at l. 64.

95. Id. at act 4, sc. 2, l. 159.

96. Id. at l. 153; see id. at act. 5, sc. 1, ll. 542-548.

97. See HAROLD BLOOM, SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN 358, 374-79 (1998).

98. Cf. Frank Rich, In the Land of the Pious Hypocrite, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Jan. 19, 1999, at 19A:

We may need Larry Flynt . . .--not to expose any impeachment manager's sex life but simply because his very presence exposes the disingenuousness of everybody else, conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, press and public, who inhabits the epic Bosch canvas that is Monicagate. In the land of the pious hypocrite, the honest pornographer is king.

99. "The Hustler editor who serves as Flynt's collaborator in tracking down congressional trysts unabashedly describes their enterprise as 'vandalism,' not journalism." Id.

100. See BLOOM, supra note 97, at 358-59.

101. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, ll. 52-53.

102. Id. at ll. 54-55.

103. Id. at ll. 57-61.

104. Id. at l. 62; see id. at ll. 52-53; editor note accompanying l. 60.

105. See generally Jack W. Germond & Jules Witcover, The Committee Stages a Farce, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Nov. 22, 1998, at 8D: "The only thing that seems to have happened is that the committee has given the American people new reason to be contemptuous of Congress and the political process. If these are serious people weighing the fate of a president, where are the clowns?" Id.

106. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, l. 73.

107. Id. at ll. 76-77.

108. See id. at ll. 73-77; see id. at ll. 93-94; editor note accompanying l. 73.

109. Id. at l. 90; see id. at editor note accompanying l. 90.

110. Cf. T.R. Goldman, Kendall's Tack: Would EBW Be Proud?, LEGAL TIMES, Feb. 8, 1999, at 10 (referring to Clinton lawyer David Kendall's "electric exchange" with Starr before the House Judiciary Committee, "when Kendall riled Starr . . . only to coolly cut the independent counsel to the quick with evidence that seemed to contradict Starr's testimony"). For a fuller account of the interrogation, see Gregory C. Baumann, Was William Ginsburg Right, After All?, LEGAL TIMES, Nov. 23, 1998, at 14.

111. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, ll. 92162; see supra text accompanying note 65. At one point, Escalus tells Pompey, "Come, you are a tedious fool: to the purpose," which sets Pompey to punning on the word "come." Id. at l. 118; see id. at ll. 121, 123-25 (moving from "come" to the introduction of "Master Froth"). Moments later, an exasperated Angelo moans, "This will last out a night in Russia." Id. at l. 136.

112. Id. at ll. 163-164.

113. "The house is a respected house; next, this is a respected fellow; and his mistress is a respected woman." Id. at ll. 165-167.

114. Id. at ll. 167-169; see id. at editor note accompanying l. 166.

115. Id. at ll. 171-172.

116. Id. at ll. 173-174.

117. Id. at ll. 177-181; see id. at editor note accompanying l. 178 (identifying "Hannibal" as an "error for 'cannibal'").

118. See Anthony Lewis, Blinded by Their Righteousness, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Feb. 10, 1999, at 17A ("The Republican managers did not understand how their zealotry troubled their audience," the American electorate.); William Raspberry, The Slippery Path to Obsession, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Jan. 29, 1999, at 15A (discerning "the House managers' knowledge that they're starting to look ridiculous"); Frank Rich, The Public's Intelligent Example, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Feb. 16, 1999, at 19A (quoting fulminations against the public for continuing to support Clinton from Henry Hyde and fellow House manager Lindsey Graham).

119. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 1, l. 175; see supra text accompanying note 66.

120. See Maureen Dowd, The President Looks for a Little Holiness, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, Jan. 28, 1999, at 16A (finishing a column grilling the President for political exploitation of his meeting with the Pope with "Still, Bill Clinton's moral and ethical sloppiness is less heinous than the unforgiving and hypocritical behavior of Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and their lynch mob.").
A Roz Chast cartoon in The New Yorker entitled "Valentines for Republicans," aptly captured the public attitude toward the House managers. For example, the card to Congressman Bill McCollum reads, "You're so right and we're so wrong, / Up in Heaven is where you belong. / Morally speaking, you're the winner-- / Happy Valentine's Day from a lowly sinner." NEW YORKER, Feb. 15, 1999, at 70.

121. See supra text accompanying note 69.

122. See Maureen Dowd, Newt and the Fall of the Meanies: Why Extremes Are Extremely Uncool, PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE, Nov. 11, 1998, at A19.

123. See Ellen Goodman, When Will Monica Apologize?, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Feb. 17, 1999, at 13A. See also Maureen Dowd, Surfeit of Sex No Longer Sexy, SARASOTA HERALD-TRIB., Mar. 2, 1999, at 23A (describing but doubting this version of the events).

124. See supra text accompanying note 44.

125. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 2, sc. 3, ll. 12-13; see id. at editor note accompanying l. 13.

126. Id. at ll. 30-31; see id. at l. 32.

127. See id. at act 2, sc. 2, l. 31.

128. Id. at ll. 22-23. "Let her have needful but not lavish means . . . ." Id. at l. 32.

129. Id. at act 2, sc. 3, ll. 47-49.

130. See Charles W. Collier & Christopher Slobogin, Terms of Endearment and Articles of Impeachment, 51 FLA. L. REV. 615, 63037 (1999); Dowd, Clintonites, supra note 81, at 11A; Maureen Dowd, Maladroit du Seigneur, MEMPHIS COMM. APPEAL, Oct. 4, 1998, at B4; Dowd, Tawdry, supra note 55, at 27A.

131. See Collier & Slobogin, supra note 130, at 635.

132. See Michael E. Ruane & Fredrick Kunkle, Maryland Drops Linda Tripp Prosecution, WASH. POST, May 25, 2000, at A1.

133. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 1, ll. 5564, 72-86.

134. See id. at act 3, sc. 1, ll. 266-269.

135. See id. at act 4, sc. 6, ll. 1-5; cf. id. at act 5, sc. 1, ll. 23-141, 194-265 (Isabella's and Mariana's testimony); see supra text accompanying note 59. The agreement also contemplates possible perjury by the friar. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 4, sc. 6, ll. 6-9.

136. SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 5, sc. 1, l. 477.

137. Id. at ll. 478-479, 494-496.

138. See Collier & Slobogin, supra note 130, at 637-638.

139. See supra text accompanying notes 5-64.

140. See SHAKESPEARE, supra note 1, at act 1, sc. 2, ll. 192196 (Lucio); act 2, sc. 1, ll. 41-4

Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

The University of Texas School of Law

Quick Links:

Main Navigation

Law in Popular Culture collection

Jamail Center for Legal Research Tarlton Law Library

The University of Texas School of Law

Quick Links:

Main Navigation

Law in Popular Culture collection

Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library