Athwart Decorum : David Thacker's Postmodern Measure for Measure

抄録

From its complicated plot and the ambivalent ending, Measure for Measure is called a tragi-comedy, or a 'problem play'. While numerous attempts have been made by scholars to explore the problematic aspects in the play, in his postmodern production Measure for Measure (1994), David Thacker attempts to interpret the play in his own way. For example, the director additionally endows the heroine Isabella, whose verbose tendency also presents some contradictions in her personality, with boyish elements so as to make her position more tolerable. Furthermore, while Shakespeare provided the Duke with a monk's costume so that he can observe the state without being known who he is (this might be enough for the Shakespearean period), Thacker endows the Duke with a state of the art technology such as hidden cameras in order to secure his unshakeable power, as well as to imply the stability of the invisible power discourse in the modern state. In this sense, it can be said that this production makes the fact 'visible' in an ironical sense as postmodernists usually aim at. By using the tactics of postmodernist interpretation, the director seems not only to wrestle with the controversial aspects in this playtext, but also to represent the actual state of our present mood.