SOURCE: “Dogberry Hero: Shakespeare's Comic Constables in Their Communal Context,” Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 2, Spring, 1992, pp. 161-78.

[In the following essay, Spinrad argues that the constables are reassuring figures—despite and due to their ineptitude—within the more sinister power dynamics in Much Ado about Nothing and Measure for Measure.]

Dogberry and Elbow, Shakespeare's most famous comic constables, have long been recognized both as satiric commentary on the corruptions in Elizabethan local law-enforcement systems and as thematic commentary on the judicial or social systems within the larger scope of their plays. Of course, beyond their historico-thematic functions, the constables are also some of the choicest bits of Shakespearean humor, with their malapropisms, their inability to articulate what the charges against a malefactor are, and in general their bumbling, although well-meaning, inefficiency. And yet, even those critics who find the constables' “inefficiency” the most endearing aspect of their comic effect must often admit that they are not all that inefficient; Dogberry and his minions do in fact break up Don John's plot in Much Ado, and in Measure for Measure Elbow does in fact break up whatever it is that is happening in Pompey's alehouse, as well as finally bringing Pompey to justice a second time, this time on charges that apparently stick.¹ The constables, then, are not entirely ineffectual, although they may be inefficient. And I should like to suggest that their very inefficiency is part of their effectuality, as well as another level of satiric commentary on the over-efficiency of even good enforcement systems; that they represent, in fact, the substratum of at least pre-modern comedy which assures the audience that all things will work out well, both on the stage and in society, because it is in the nature of things to do so unless forcibly disrupted from outside.

One of the historical assumptions about these constables² is that the Elizabethan constabulary system was riddled with corruption, the constables generally being taken from among the illiterate and therefore stupid commons, the minimally employable who gladly leaped at the chance to act as substitutes for the otherwise qualified who did not wish to be bothered with the task. To a certain extent, these statements have a bit of truth in them; like any system, the constabulary system was open to abuse. But Dogberry is by no means in abuse of his office, and although Elbow is apparently one of those paid substitutes, he is performing an important duty at great sacrifice to himself and his family—and he is performing at least as well as the person for whom he is acting might do.

It may be helpful to review who and what the constables of Elizabethan England were.³ The constable was normally elected by his (and sometimes her!) neighbors in a village, town, or ward (city sector).⁴ Eligibility was dependent not on income or class so much as residence in or attachment to a particular household or tenement, although such residence was of course a matter of class and income to a certain extent. When the population of a community was particularly mobile, the buying and selling of tenement holdings might result in constables who were virtual strangers; however, in stable populations, the constable was a neighbor, a settled member of the community whom one might have known from infancy. The term of office was usually for one year, and the office was supposed to be rotated among the eligible householders so that no one was subject to the hardships of the office for a ruinously long time. Elbow's tenure of seven and a half years, then, may indeed be an abuse of the system, as Escalus assumes:

Escalus: Alas, it hath been
great pains to you; they do you wrong to put you so oft upon’t. Are
there not men in your ward sufficient to serve it?
Elbow: Faith, sir, few of any wit
in such matters. As they are chosen, they are glad to choose me for them;
I do it for some piece of money, and go through with all.
Escalus: Look you bring me in the
names of some six or seven, the most sufficient of your parish.

(2.1.251-57)⁵

It is not clear whether Elbow is an officially appointed deputy, who would have been paid out of the constable's own pocket, or whether he has simply had the position fobbed off on him. Occasionally, as Joan Kent observes, “men and women who were considered personally exempt from serving … were ordered to find deputies for their tenements, and incumbents occasionally appointed a deputy if they were incapacitated or obliged to be absent from the community; but the records provide very little other evidence of substitutions”⁶ The problem with Elbow's service, then, is not his status as deputy but rather its duration; a series of neighbors, rather than just one, have hired him as substitute. This may indicate that the whole society is corrupt, in that too many eligible citizens are refusing their law-enforcement duty for one reason or another. It may also indicate corruption on a more personal level, in that the citizens are victimizing a neighbor whom they should protect—that is, they are luring him into impoverishing himself under the guise of paying him money “up front.” As I will note shortly, constabulary duty was expensive and time-consuming.

Dogberry appears to have been elected in the normal way; he is a man of some substance in Messina, as he indignantly informs Conrade:

Dogberry: I am a wise fellow;
and which is more, an officer; and which is more, a householder; and which
is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows
the law, go to! and a rich fellow enough, go to! and a fellow that hath had
losses; and one that hath two gowns and everything handsome about him.

(Much Ado 4.2.73-78)

Furthermore, his knowledge of the law is not as faulty as might appear on the surface. As O. Hood Phillips points out, he is careful in his choice of deputies for the watch, picking those who can read and write, and his caution to them to “keep your fellows' counsel and your own” (3.3.79-80) is an actual phrase taken from the charge to the grand jury of the time.⁷ He is also conscientious in telling his deputies to call him out of bed if there is any “matter of weight.”

The fact that Dogberry himself is apparently unable to read and write is not in itself an abuse. We must remember that illiteracy is not necessarily synonymous with stupidity. Although Dogberry does not seem to be gifted with a high IQ, his illiteracy might not be unusual in a given community. The literacy level among constables varied, sometimes as low as 15 percent and sometimes as high as 80 percent, and illiterate constables usually had neighbors fill out paperwork for them, or, as Dogberry does, submitted all paperwork chores to their superiors. The occasional failure of a constable to find anyone to read his instructions to him or take down charges for him does not seem to be one of Dogberry's problems. Despite his poor memory for the nature of words, he is aware of the duties which the words signify. Nor does he seem to be liable to an unpopular constable's problem of having literate but malicious neighbors falsify what they are reading and writing for him. Dogberry's literate deputies obey his orders, and the Sexton (or Town Clerk) who transcribes the testimony in the examination of prisoners is careful to guide the testimony into the correct channels.

Phillips points out that “by English law [the examination of the prisoners] should have been conducted before two justices,”⁸ but here again I think we see conscientious rather than mistaken performance of duty on the part of Dogberry, especially since the Sexton does not protest the irregularity. The testimony is of immediate importance to the community, Leonato (who as governor of Messina may also be its Justice) is preoccupied with his daughter's wedding, and the traveling justices may not be available for days or even weeks. Indeed, the chain of command for a constable was a multiplex and sometimes confusing one. Petty constables such as Dogberry reported variously to high constables, sheriffs, bailiffs, justices, and royal visitors, and often had to travel long distances to make their presentments at leet courts and assizes. Since Dogberry invokes “the Prince's name” when briefing his deputies, he is obviously aware of the bureaucratic channels to which he is responsible.

For what duties was a constable responsible? The list is almost too long to enumerate here, but it included the following: apprehending vagrants (about which more in a moment), whipping them, and passing them on to the next town's constable to be further whipped and passed on until they were returned to the parish of their birth; housing any vagrants whose home parishes could not be determined; arresting and jailing and/or punishing thieves, drunks, murderers, assault perpetrators, and other offenders; searching houses for stolen goods; issuing warrants; keeping watch and ward; breaking up fights; assessing and collecting fines and taxes; impressing soldiers as necessary; verifying and enforcing licenses of alehouses; disseminating government proclamations; appearing before leet courts and assizes to testify in criminal cases; and a host of other time-consuming (and money-consuming) duties.

A small stipend was allotted for the performance of these duties, but it was seldom enough to cover immediate expenses. The constable was responsible for hiring his own deputies and maintaining local jail facilities, or housing suspects where no jail facilities were available. When called to appear before assizes, he traveled at his own expense. Although he might be reimbursed for costs incurred while on duty, he still had to advance the money from his own pocket. And of course during the performance of constabulary duty he had to neglect his own business or hire assistants to carry on in his absence. We may almost begin to understand why the residents of Vienna might appreciate a tractable Elbow who will do the work for them.

Furthermore, constabulary duty could be dangerous. Criminals were not always as docile as Borachio, Conrade, Pompey, and Froth; a constable acting alone was subject to assault, and sometimes he could not get enough assistants to help him. In fact, his assistants might be the very people he had to arrest. There are many cases on record of a constable's being assaulted by his own townspeople, particularly during his attempts to search a house, break up a fight, collect an unpopular assessment, close down an illegal alehouse, or stop a popular local crime such as smuggling.

Pity the poor constable. As a local resident, he was usually torn between loyalty to his own community and responsibility to his superiors and the central government. Animosity incurred during his time of office might injure his business afterward, either because he would lose his neighbors' custom or because they would crack down on him more heavily when they were in office. But failure to perform his duties as expected by the central government would involve him in additional trips to explain before the courts why he had been negligent, and might result in heavy fines. The conflicting pressures are aptly summed up in a ballad of 1626 cited by Joan Kent, which is attributed to a Surrey constable:

The Justices will set us by the heels
If we do not as we should;
Which if we perform, the townsmen will storm;
Some of them hang's if they could.(9)

Although Boorman points out that “to be merely a justice of the peace, even a churchwarden, gave a man a kind of local social immortality denied to the common man,”¹⁰ the job was by no means without its dangers to that immortality—both figuratively and literally.

In view of these pressures on local residents who were also the overseers of their own neighbors for a year or more at a time, Dogberry's laissez-faire attitude that Robert Ornstein so aptly calls his “Jeffersonian approach to keeping the peace” is understandable.¹¹ But the nature of some of the “crimes” that Dogberry and Elbow are supposed to control may shed still more light on Dogberry's good nature—and Elbow's heroism. Both Nevo and Ornstein,¹² for example, almost instinctively take delight in Dogberry's instructions on dealing with town vagrants:

Dogberry: This is your charge:
you shall comprehend all vagrom men; you are to bid any man stand, in the
Prince's name.
2 Watch: How if ’a will not
stand?
Dogberry: Why then, take no note
of him, but let him go, and presently call the rest of the watch together
and thank God you are rid of a knave.
Verges: If he will not stand when
he is bidden, he is none of the Prince's subjects.

(Much Ado 3.3.22-30)

The vagrancy problem in England had grown progressively worse throughout the sixteenth century and was essentially a problem of poverty, of “masterless men” forced out on the roads or into the towns to beg. By statutory definition, according to Manning, “a vagrant was a person able to labour who possessed neither land nor master, who worked at no recognized trade, and who refused to accept such employment as might be offered to him. Almost invariably this meant working as a servant-in-husbandry or agricultural labourer.”¹³ Many of these men had been made landless or masterless by land enclosures and the new centering of wage industries in the towns, and the very conditions of their unemployment guaranteed its continuance. Therefore, they traveled in order to find employment elsewhere but usually found only more of the same conditions. When employment was not available and begging failed to sustain them, they turned to assault and robbery.

The vagrants, then, were considered dangerous, both to the economy and to life and limb. They were also a drain on even those towns that had a system of poor relief, as some of the major cities did by the 1590s: “A category of deserving poor was discovered, but the deserving poor excluded all who could not establish a claim to residence.”¹⁴ The Vagrancy Act of 1572 decreed that first offenders were to be imprisoned until the next quarter sessions; those who were convicted at the sessions were to be whipped and branded on the ear, while second offenders were adjudged as felons, and escapees were hanged. The next Vagrancy Act, of 1597, stipulated further that vagrants were to be whipped from town to town back to their legal parishes; if the legal parish of a vagrant could not be determined, the last town that failed to whip him had to assume the cost of his support.¹⁵

Note that vagrants were not simply turned out of town but were literally whipped through the parish until they arrived at the border of the next parish, where the constable was responsible for whipping them in turn to his own border, and so on until the vagrants arrived at their own towns—where they would not, of course, have established residences and therefore could not receive poor relief, so that the whole cycle might begin again. Someone who had wandered a long way would thus receive a number of whippings before returning home—perhaps to face starvation or more whippings—and it is little wonder that vagrants about to be apprehended might turn ferocious enough to make Dogberry and his men chary of intercepting them. In addition, the costs involved in housing the vagrants, either until quarter sessions or permanently, could prove ruinous to a small businessman like Dogberry. If the knaves could find their own way home, all the better.

Although Dogberry's instructions to the Watch, including his caution that “the most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is to let him show himself what he is, and steal out of your company” (3.3.53-55), may be interpreted as simply cowardice or negligence, they may also be interpreted as good sense (a thief identified at night can be better apprehended by a large posse during the day) or even merciful, as Verges insists. Although Elizabethans in general did not share our squeamishness about physical punishment, Dogberry apparently does: “Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man that hath any honesty in him” (3.3.58-59). In an age that enjoyed bull and bear baiting, and that skinned animals alive under the impression that such a procedure improved the pelts, this is squeamishness indeed. Notably, even Queen Elizabeth showed no such squeamishness. Manning records the following incident, in which we should bear in mind that those who were arrested faced at least whipping and branding, if not hanging:

Early in January 1582, towards the end of Christmastide, the Queen was riding through Islington when her carriage was surrounded by a great crowd of beggars. The incident must have alarmed her, because William Fleetwood, recorder of London, was ordered to begin a sweep of masterless men the same day. The campaign lasted about ten days and netted several hundred vagrants—100 being taken in a single day.¹⁶

Nor is Dogberry alone in being more merciful than his superiors; of those constables who were charged with neglect of duty by the leet courts, most were accused of failing to apprehend vagrants or allowing the escape of prisoners. Their “live and let live” attitude, then, not only gave a more literal meaning to “letting live” than we are accustomed to assuming, but also cost them more literally, in the fines levied on them for negligence, than we might be willing to pay. However, when real trouble threatens the community, both Dogberry and Elbow do not hesitate to act.

Dogberry's men do “watch about Signior Leonato's door, for the wedding being there to-morrow, there is a great coil tonight,” as Dogberry instructs them (Much Ado 3.3.85-87); and when they overhear Borachio's and Conrade's admission of having caused harm to a neighbor, they make an immediate arrest. As for Elbow's apprehension of Pompey and Froth, we must remember that it is a single-handed taking of two men who might cause the constable grievous bodily harm. The “alehouse” in which they are taken is actually a brothel, in which Elizabethans knew ruffians and desperate men congregated—in fact, many of these alehouses were hiding places for the vagrants whom Elbow, too, is apparently unwilling to whip out of town. There has been a “Jeffersonian approach” to justice in Vienna as well as in Messina, on more levels than the Duke's; but perhaps Elbow's laxity is more excusable than the Duke's, and his justice more equitable than either the Duke's or Angelo's. To be sure, one of the constable's duties was inspecting and enforcing alehouse licenses, so Elbow has good reason to be checking them; however, although Manning cites “one in ten houses” functioning as illegal alehouses, he also notes that constables were “frequently lax” in suppressing them since “some alehouse keepers had no other source of income and might otherwise have become public charges.”¹⁷

If a tradeoff has to be made, then, between enforcing the alehouse laws and giving poor people a source of income and a refuge from the Vagrancy Acts, Elbow apparently takes the more charitable option. Note that this is not simply a question of “looking the other way” in matters of sexual corruption, which is the problem in the foreground of the play's opposition of mercy and justice, but a question of communal well-being: the alehouses, however suspect in sexual matters, are sources of income for the proprietors, safe haven for beggars, and neighborhood bars for the working people of the community. Only when the threat to the community outweighs other considerations does Elbow act. It is difficult, of course, to cut through the malapropisms of Elbow's charges in order to discover what has happened in Pompey's alehouse, but from the few things understandable, it appears that Elbow's pregnant wife entered in an innocent attempt to get some refreshment, including a dish of prunes. While there, she was accosted in some way by either Pompey or Froth and solicited to join Mistress Overdone's stable. Whatever was said or done to her, it was apparently coarse enough to cause her not just to leave but to spit in someone's face—perhaps as a way of pulling free from physical assault. We will never know; even Escalus cannot figure it out. But whatever happened, Elbow considered it harm to a citizen and accordingly risked danger and expense to himself in order to make the arrest.

It may be objected that Elbow has arrested Pompey and Froth only because his own wife has been harmed. However, as we see later, the prison of Vienna is quite full, so Elbow, as chief arresting officer, has been active in other cases as well. The significant point about the case that we do see is that much as we may laugh knowingly at Lucio's and Pompey's contempt for the law, an innocent citizen is not safe on the streets of Vienna when such men are in control of public mores. There is more, then, to the problem of vice than is mentioned in the theorizing of the major characters. Even Angelo, who has given lip service to what we would now call “victims' rights,” essentially does to Isabella, once he succumbs to the prevailing vice of Vienna, what Froth has done to Mistress Elbow. The difference between the two cases is one of degree, not of kind.

It may be objected, too, that the arrest leads to no punishment; because the charges are so incomprehensible, both Froth and Pompey are let off with warnings. But the point is that, as with Dogberry's case, although the bumbling of a constable prevents immediate official measures, the presence of the constable insures the balking of a menace to individual citizens. Elbow's wife is rescued; Froth is removed from the scene and perhaps scared into better behavior in the future; Pompey will be watched more carefully in the future; and Don John's plot, however it may succeed for the moment, is doomed. Furthermore, in each case the official system has been ineffectual while the individual community system has worked.

This is a point often overlooked or at least glossed over too quickly: that as constables, Dogberry and Elbow may be washouts, but as people who are simply there, wandering around and seeing what is going on, they preserve the wellbeing of the community. We may draw an analogy here with small towns and crowded city neighborhoods of our own recent past. Before the advent of television, air conditioning, automobiles, backyard grills, and other technological marvels, people spent a good deal of time sitting outside or at least leaning out of windows, visibly minding each other's business. Strangers were scrutinized and often questioned; odd behavior was noted and discussed and dangerous behavior interrupted on the spot; and if there was an annoying lack of privacy in all this, there was also much safety. Conversely, when a community felt that officialdom was being too harsh on a well-liked neighbor, it could become remarkably reticent and “ignorant” about the neighbor's activities or whereabouts—until officialdom left, at which time the community's eyes, memory, and voice miraculously recovered.¹⁸ We have tried to recapture this security with “block watches,” but there is a difference between signs posted on pillars and dozens of visible eyes watching one's movements. Furthermore, once a living communal organism breaks down, even those who do watch are reluctant to act, since they do not know their neighbors well enough to depend on them for help (as in the Kitty Genovese case).

An editorial digression on our own society? Perhaps; but perhaps, too, with some relevance to Shakespeare's society. Interestingly, Shakespeare presents this self-protecting nature of community as a counteragent against both too much and too little official enforcement in the two plays, just as it may have existed in his two residences and indeed in the changing sociopolitical climate in different parts of England. In Stratford, apparently, the Dogberrian method of enforcement was favored. F. W. Brownlow, speculating about John Shakespeare's recusancy, notes that:

[A] document such as the Warwickshire recusancy return of 1592 … is a record of the coercive power of the Tudor state, extending itself into every parish, affecting the lives of very ordinary subjects of the crown. One natural reaction to such governmental meddling was to find various ways of being as little affected as possible, and it is not surprising that in many parishes … there are signs that local officers did not like to push the penal laws too hard against their friends and neighbors. In Stratford in 1592, the wardens seem to have responded to the letter of the law and no more.¹⁹

Whether the Tudor state was more coercive than any other is disputable; however, its systems of investigation and enforcement were complex and multitudinous. We have already noted the numerous chains of command to which the constable had to report, each link of which had similarly complex chains of command above it. In addition, the religious network, now linked to the State by the Henrician centralization and Elizabethan settlement, had become similarly entangled. The “wardens” referred to by Brownlow were the local churchwardens who were commissioned to examine households for orthodoxy or heterodoxy, examinations which meant not only catechesis and keeping records of church attendance but also home visitation to check for immoral practices, illicit popish artifacts, and evidence of priest-harboring. Philip Hughes calls the churchwarden of the time “the unpaid constable and detective for parochial morality in its widest and in its narrowest sense,”²⁰ and reminds us that churchwardens also inspected the orthodoxy of the schools, often deputizing the local schoolmaster into being yet another detective. As an additional entangling of the bureaucracy, churchwardens' reports were due both to the bishop and to the central government's secular authorities, and since papistry was considered a crime of treason rather than of heresy, male-factors of this sort were tried as civil offenders first in Church courts and then passed on to the central government. The churchwardens, in their turn, were subject to episcopal and governmental visitation to insure that they were reporting correctly.

In addition, as the anti-papist legislation increased in rigor and urgency throughout the 1580s and 1590s, and as more and more seminary priests arrived from the Continent, government pursuivants, who had previously been considered simply government inspectors, became virtually synonymous with priest-hunters, and their numbers were increased. Since many of the new pursuivants were free-lancers who were paid on the basis of their results, their visits became more frequent and more intense.²¹ Residents of a given town, then, considered simply as ordinary householders of whatever persuasion or class, were increasingly subject to the “meddling” that Brownlow cites: constables, churchwardens, episcopal visitors, justices, pursuivants, and a host of other representatives of officialdom.

It is important to note that most of the surveillance came from the outside, and that the old system of checks and balances, where the Church might provide protection from the State and vice versa, had disappeared with the consolidation of the two. As Clark and Slack point out, even such officials as now reported to the central government had once been merely local figures like the constable;²² and the craft guilds that had once been part of the religious and communal life of towns were now mostly run by the politically powerful and were “closely integrated with civic administration. In many communities they were little more than auxiliary weapons of the town oligarchy, as at Maidstone, where the guild wardens were employed to patrol the town, suppress disorder, and eject undesirables.”²³ In effect, there were now either parallel constabularies even at the local level, one empowered by the central government and one drawn by election from householders, or a single constabulary whose vested interests were more and more divorced from those of the common citizen.²⁴

If the bureaucracy had made Stratford's enforcement system too burdensome, however, it seems to have made that of London too slipshod. The central “old city” was as tightly run as a center of government might be expected to be, but as Clark and Slack observe, “the city fathers had made no attempt to extend their jurisdiction to cover the new suburbs to the north, east, and west.” By the turn of the seventeenth century, then, “much of greater London was ruled by an impotent alliance of parish, manorial, and county authorities. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, … the government of outer London steadily disintegrated, making it vulnerable to political agitation.”²⁵ These suburbs, then, perhaps like the suburbs of Vienna in Measure for Measure, were subject more to the anarchy of nonrule than to the tyranny of overenforcement, except (again as in Vienna) during government crackdowns on what was perceived to be dangerous to the State.

In addition, the influx of workers to these suburbs of London led to a new kind of communal network almost unknown in towns. Although the guilds had by now become political rather than trade or religious entities, people working the same crafts tended to live together in clusters, forming (we might say) craft ghettos where there had once been craft guilds. In these ghettos there developed the same kinds of self-protecting bonds that had once been formed by geographic or familial ties, but on a smaller and perhaps more desperate scale.²⁶ Newcomers were closely scrutinized, strangers were suspect, and when danger threatened a member of the community, the community often responded by taking the law into its own hands, since it apparently could not depend on the chaotic enforcement system to act—or even care.

In both cases, that of the overly governed town and that of the insufficiently governed city suburb, figures such as Dogberry and Elbow are both necessary and reassuring. Dogberry's slipshod surveillance is evidence that the local constabulary has local rather than central governmental interests at heart; and his actual capture of miscreants shows that the communal organism can protect itself without interference from outside. Conversely, Elbow's activism shows that the community can arrest danger to itself both when enforcement agencies are too lax and when they are witch-hunting outside the purview of what really threatens the well-being of local citizens.

Of Elbow's place in Vienna and his play, I will say more in a moment. In the case of Dogberry, we do not have quite so desperate a case, since he comes from the kind of community that protected John Shakespeare and therefore can be said to function well. However, even in Messina there are potential problems in trusting the government, problems that become darker in the story of Vienna. As S. C. Boorman points out, even the most benevolent rulers are subject to human flaws and follies, so that even in comedy the “wise fool” must be used as a check against hubris: “Dogberry's stupidity and complacent acceptance of his own little social importance … reminds us that the more ‘important’ figures of the play have their own stupidity and complacency, show an equally human confusion and inadequacy.”²⁷ Leonato, Benedick, Beatrice, and Claudio (not to mention Don John) are as concerned as is Dogberry not to be considered asses; but Dogberry, for all his asininity, performs his duty in spite of the insults to his dignity—and without the manipulative tricks that the other characters play to gain even their well-meant ends. Although Ornstein perhaps exaggerates in claiming that “Kindly himself, Dogberry inspires kindness in others”²⁸—Dogberry inspires as much exasperation as kindness—the point is that Dogberry muddles through when every supposedly intelligent and “expert” member of society is going to pieces. And in this sense, Ornstein's comment in another context captures the essence of Dogberry's status as hero: “the security of comedy depends on an assurance (or a hope) that top side is right side, that communal life is nurturing despite the blusterings of fathers. …”²⁹

Messina, of course, is a fairly stable society in which the communal structure needs only an occasional nudge to stay in good order. Vienna is another story. The laxity of the Duke has created danger in the streets, much as it did in suburban London, and the sudden cracking down on sexual offenses does little to correct the immediate problem for common citizens. The duration of Elbow's time in office, discussed earlier, indicates that external efforts to maintain the peace have collapsed, and that therefore whatever steps are now being taken to control crime are those originating in a narrowly defined estimate of the problem: one of sexuality rather than public safety. Notably, Rosalind Miles, who observes that Angelo's theories of government “bear so close a correspondence to Tudor theories … that an audience of 1604 would fully have appreciated their force,” also observes of the Duke that he shows “very little moral outrage” at the vices of the low-lives whom he meets.³⁰ Both the strict Angelo and the merciful Duke, then, operate by theories rather than by the simple “moral outrage” shown by Elbow. And as with Dogberry, sometimes a simple-minded, instinctive outrage with wrong may work where the theorizers fail.

This is not to claim that theories are ineffectual and gut reactions the basis on which we should build society; nor is it to claim that Shakespeare would have claimed such a dangerous proposition. But as Boorman points out, Elizabethan discussions of reason and passion saw a danger in too divorced a reason as well as in too unbridled a passion. Reason must be in control, but it cannot stand alone, or it becomes nonhuman.³¹ Hence the dramatic convention of the “wise fool” who sees what the foolish wise have lost sight of, and hence the reassurance that while all the judicial supervisors are arguing out their theories of justice and mercy, someone will still be available to lose his temper and do something constructive when a woman who attempts to buy a dish of prunes is given insults or pinches on the posterior instead.

Two scenes in Measure for Measure may illustrate the point. Act 2, scene 1, in which Elbow brings his presentment against Froth and Pompey before Angelo and Escalus, is generally viewed as a contrast between the bad and good justice of Angelo and Escalus, respectively. Angelo loses patience early and walks out on the case, leaving the judgment to Escalus and closing with the hope that “you’ll find good cause to whip them all” (2.1.130). The departure and the intent to punish regardless of the results of a trial are quite rightly seen as tyrannous justice, much in the nature of Pontius Pilate's: simultaneously lax in the performance of duty and draconian in the imposition of punishment. Escalus is thus seen as the contrast to Angelo, and therefore his judgments are cited as the via media between Angelo's rigor and the Duke's laxity, a standard against which we measure all the characters' decisions at the end of the play. But Escalus himself has a contrast in this scene. Although his judgments are just, they are undercut to a certain extent by Pompey's aside: “I thank your worship for your good counsel; [aside] but I shall follow it as the flesh and fortune shall better determine” (2.1.237-39). At least one of the corrections that he has attempted on human behavior has not had its intended effect, nor, by implication, will the laws against the whorehouses be fully effective unless he intends, as Pompey jokes, to “geld and splay” all the youth of Vienna (2.1.217-18). Escalus's counsel is wise and just, but it does not reform Pompey. It is Elbow once again who persistently monitors Pompey's actions and hauls him in again in act 3, scene 2, this time on charges that are more officially acceptable and therefore put Pompey in jail.

The undercutting of Escalus's sage counsel has its parallel in the final Judgment scene (5.1), a scene much debated by critics. Regardless of whether we view the Duke as an irresponsible ruler or a Christ-figure, we cannot evade the issue of Lucio's running commentary during what should be the Duke's great moment of justice. The scene can be played easily without the Duke's losing his dignity; but there is no way to eliminate Lucio from it altogether without destroying the scene. And it must be Lucio who unveils the pseudo-Friar. The Duke, in this scene, is just; the Duke is wise; the Duke reprieves and reforms at the same time—maybe. But if he is too powerful in his wisdom and justice, if all things work the way he plans them, what is to prevent him from becoming a tyrant-figure in his own right, at least in the perception of the audience?

In tragedy we generally expect a total collapse of a society, which is then put back together by a powerful figure from the outside; omnipotence here is welcome. But in comedy we expect a society to put itself back together from the inside; and omnipotence here is dangerous. In Measure for Measure, especially, most of the trouble has come from rulers who think themselves above common humanity: Angelo, whose “blood / Is very snow-broth” (Lucio, 1.4.57-58), and the Duke, who has “ever loved the life removed” (1.3.5) and who plays espionage, bed-trick, and testing games with his suffering subjects. If the Duke's games were all successful, he would be as dangerous as Angelo, because he too would be playing God and considering himself a highly successful God. He must be “written down an ass” like Dogberry before the audience can be assured that his resumed rule will be a better version than the first. At the very least, the audience must not class him with the bureaucracy that they know too well in their own lives.

In this comedic sense, then, Dogberry and Elbow and all their bumbling kind are the true heroes of their societies and the audience's. Notably, both of them are presented early enough in their plays to reassure us that no matter how bad things get, someone who can do something will be watching, ready to step in when all else fails. They can barely be understood by officialdom; but then, officialdom does not understand a number of things about local conditions, things that Dogberry and Elbow understand very well. They are stupid enough not to be frightening to us or to anyone else—the felons they arrest will not consider them dangerous enough to assault—and yet not so stupid that they cannot tell when one of us is in trouble and needs help. When government is oppressive, they defend us; when government is ineffectual, they watch over us; we may laugh at them, indeed must laugh at them, but we cannot do without them. They are the eyes and hands of the communal body, our assurance that when the world is collapsing, our neighborhood is safe.

Notes

1. See, for example, Ruth Nevo, Comic Transformations in Shakespeare (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), 119; S. C. Boorman, Human Conflict in Shakespeare (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), esp. 87; and O. Hood Phillips, Shakespeare and the Lawyers (London: Methuen, 1972), 68.

2. I concentrate primarily on Dogberry and Elbow because they seem to epitomize the community's response to two types of problems: too much and too little governmental surveillance and protection. There are, of course, many other law enforcement officials in Shakespeare: Constable Dull in Love's Labour's Lost, Justice Shallow in 2 Henry IV and Merry Wives, and the various sheriffs, bailiffs, arresting officers, justices, and King's (or other ruler's) men of the tragedies and histories.

3. Unless otherwise specified, the ensuing description of the constabulary system is taken from Joan R. Kent, The English Village Constable 1580-1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); material on village and town structures is from Peter Clark and Paul Slack, English Towns in Transition, 1500-1700 (London: Oxford University Press, 1976); and material on the vagrancy problem is both from Clark and Slack and from Roger B. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Irene Gladwin's The Sheriff: The Man and His Office (London: Victor Gollancz, 1974) indirectly shows the relationship between constable and sheriff; and J. H. Gleason does the same for Justices of the Peace in The Justices of the Peace in England, 1558 to 1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969).

4. Because the structure and duties of the constabulary system grew out of the parish system and therefore tended to be the same in different sizes of communities, with minor variations dependent more on local history than on size, I will normally use the generic term “community” for the constable's jurisdiction to avoid implying that what I am describing was typical only of a particular type of community. Where an author whom I cite uses a more specific term, it should be understood in this generic sense unless I indicate otherwise.

5. All references to the plays are taken from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (New York: Viking, 1969).

6. Kent, 74.

7. Phillips, 67-68.

8. Phillips, 68.

9. Kent, 222.

10. Boorman, 23.

11. Robert Ornstein, Shakespeare's Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 131.

12. Nevo, 119 and Ornstein, 130.

13. Manning, 159.

14. Manning, 61.

15. Manning, 165-67.

16. Manning, 169.

17. Manning, 164.

18. I must add an autobiographical note here, lest I be accused of elitist and patronizing nostalgia for something that never existed. I grew up in the South Bronx of the 1940s, lived around the corner from a pickle factory, and attended a school past whose windows ran the Third Avenue “el” trains. It was not an affluent suburb by any means. But children were safe, even after dark; and no one, whether of European, African, or Puerto Rican origin, ever locked a door during the day. Nor has the phenomenon totally disappeared; in a neighborhood where I lived in Baton Rouge in the 1980s, children played in swarms in the street, gossiping in a manner that would put adults to shame. I felt quite secure in leaving my house unprotected when I was at work or traveling; in fact, I contemplated with glee the discomfiture of any burglar who attempted to break in and found himself surrounded by children inspecting his tools, regaling him with the details of the neighbors' lives, and cross-examining him about his own.

19. See F. W. Brownlow, “John Shakespeare's Recusancy: New Light on an Old Document,” Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (1989): 186-91. The quotation is from p. 188.

20. Philip Hughes, The Reformation in England, rev. ed., 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 2:118. Hughes contends that the surveillance system started under Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII created “an efficient secret service” and the “heyday of the paid government spy” that lasted into and was intensified in the reign of Elizabeth I. Although G. R. Elton denies this allegation, the very evidence that he offers, which shows Cromwell's ignorance of the network or dismissal of charges against persons brought to him, suggests at least an increase in the perception that people were more subject to surveillance. There was now a centralized point to which magistrates, busy-bodies, and vindictive neighbors could direct their charges against citizens. Since such charges involved the transportation of the accused to examination, possible torture, and possible execution for an ever-increasing list of treasonous offenses, the ordinary citizen might well feel dangerously spied upon. See Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), esp. ch. 8.

21. John Bellamy points out that although technically the capture of priests did not come under the schedule of payments authorized for pursuivants, disclosure of “slanderous and traitorous books” did—books which, of course, could be found on the person of any priest as well as among those attending illegal Masses. The first such disclosure was worth £20 to the pursuivant, and the second and third “large rewards” plus half of the forfeitures incurred. See Bellamy's The Tudor Law of Treason (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), esp. 85 and 183. The proclamations offering the rewards are those of 1 July 1570 and 12 October 1584; see Paul L. Hughes and James F. Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), 2:577 and 2:672.

22. Clark and Slack, pp. 13 and 132.

23. Clark and Slack, 28-29.

24. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, in their introduction to Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), note the gradual pulling away of the gentry from the lower classes during the course of the sixteenth century. Prior to mid-century, the two classes had participated together in both orderly and disorderly community activities (10-12). Philip Hughes locates the dichotomy more precisely in time: the failure of the Pilgrimage of Grace (1:307-8).

25. Clark and Slack, 71.

26. It is fascinating to note that the types of neighborhoods described in this way by Clark, Slack, and Manning are still evident in the descriptions of London working-class neighborhoods given by Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century.

27. Boorman, 87.

28. Ornstein, 131.

29. Ornstein, 17.

30. Rosalind Miles, The Problem of Measure for Measure: A Historical Investigation (London: Vision Press, 1976), 213, 177. Miles gives a comprehensive summary of the critical controversies surrounding both the justice-mercy theme and the Duke's motivations. See also my “Measure for Measure and the Art of Not Dying,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 26 (1984): 74-93; N. W. Bawcutt, “‘He Who the Sword of Heaven Will Bear’: The Duke Versus Angelo in Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Survey 37 (1984): 89-97; Richard A. Levin, “Duke Vincentio and Angelo: Would ‘A Feather Turn the Scale’?” SEL 22 (1982): 257-70; and Cynthia Lewis, “‘Dark Deeds Darkly Answered’: Duke Vincentio and Judgment in Measure for Measure,” Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983): 271-89.

31. Boorman, passim.