초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Isabella’s silence in the final scene of Measure for Measure opens up various readings and performance possibilities, and has framed interpretations of her overall character. Her character embodies a Protestant dilemma: how to engage traditional conceptions of female sacredness, sacred corporeality, and visual representations of the sacred when these conceptions had become oxymoronic in a reformed religio-cultural context. This essay discusses the ways in which Isabella is tamed into a mute picture of Protestant female ideal that resonates with her initial oath to be silent when showing her face. No matter what role she chooses, nun or wife, her body is restricted, and her senses are under control. The play, however, gives Isabella a chance to prolong the interim period before she commits herself to any kind of bondage. In that moment of pause, she achieves a certain kind of sacredness of inaccessible interiority, simultaneously transitory and timeless.
