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IV

Wharton raises the possibility that "Mariana is a spurof-the-moment invention, the mere objective correlative of a plot device" (1989, p. 38), only to dismiss it out of hand: seeking to "put two and two together" to show that in trusting power to Angelo, the Duke "was licensing a man of known ruthlessness and inhumanity," Wharton has come up not with four but with nothing. Despite the obvious verbal echo, the connection between "seemer" and "well-seeming" is too tenuous to bear the weight of interpretation Wharton places upon it (for one thing, as I shall argue, the Duke's "seemers" may not apply to Angelo at all). It is not the case that the Duke "already knows Angelo to be more than 'well-seeming'." Far from having his supposed doubts about Angelo's integrity confirmed, the Duke seems, in this context (3.1.223) as in others, to be genuinely surprised at his deputy's scandalous conduct. "But that frailty hath examples for his falling," he says to Isabella, "I...

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1. Introduction
2. Ii
3. Iii
4. Iv
5. V
6. Vi
7. Copyright