Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
Journal issue | 50 | 2016
Research Article | “Let Me Have Claudio’s Head”

“Let Me Have Claudio’s Head”

The Beheading of John the Baptist as a Remote Source in Measure for Measure

Giuseppe Leone - Università degli Studi di Palermo,Italia - email

Abstract

In an attempt to produce a reconstruction of the genealogy of the sources, this essay investigates the relationship between Measure for Measure and the Gospel of Matthew, examining in particular the possibility that the episode related to Claudio’s supposed beheading is somehow associated with the death of John the Baptist, as recorded in Matthew 14:1-12. In Shakespeare as well as in the Evangelist’s text, the request for the head is charged with a highly symbolic value: it is a visualization of the triumph, the gift that the instigator makes to his own superiority, a narcissistic gratification. It is an expression of personal affirmation; an acknowledgment of one’s own power and of the capacity to make it operative. Doing violence becomes an investigation of one’s own political force. It represents the violation of the corpse, the desecration of the relic. But it is also an appalling solution to put to rest any possible accusation related to immoral or illicit relationships condemned by the law. Moreover, it is a violent act, secretly perpetrated, with neither moral purposes nor royal warning.

Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: May 12, 2016 | Accepted: July 6, 2016 | Published Sept. 30, 2016 | Language: en

Keywords Matthew’s Gospel • Measure for Measure • Shakespeare • John the Baptist

Copyright © 2016 Giuseppe Leone. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-50-16-15

↑ back to top

Read this article

Linguistics

English Support to Academic Staff
A Pilot Study at the Department of Management
Elena Borsetto, Daniel Patrick Schug
Sept. 30, 2016

The Interpretation of Indefinites with Adnominal Adjectives in the Sicilian Dialects
Vincenzo Nicolò Di Caro
Sept. 30, 2016

Accented and Deaccented Definite Determiners in Notker’s Translation of Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae
Chiara De Bastiani
Sept. 30, 2016

On Noun Clausal ‘Complements’ and their Non-unitary Nature
Guglielmo Cinque, Iliyana Krapova
Sept. 30, 2016

Subject Obviation as a Semantic Failure: a Preliminary Account
Francesco Costantini
Sept. 30, 2016

Vowel Harmony in Sardinian
-os/-us Plurals in Santa Maria Navarrese and Baunei
Michele Brunelli
Sept. 30, 2016

Access to Knowledge
The Issue of Deaf Students and More
Lara Mantovan, Carlo Geraci, Kyle Duarte, Anna Cardinaletti
Sept. 30, 2016

Oral Inter-Understanding of Words in a Phrasal Context
Lexical Transparency in the Language Couple Italian-French
Denis Passalent
Sept. 30, 2016

Analysis of the Errors in the Oral Production in French as a Foreign Language: a Case Study
Annalisa Tombolini
Sept. 30, 2016

More Languages Than We Might Have Thought. Fewer Languages Than There Might Have Been
Richard Kayne
Sept. 30, 2016

Literature, Culture, History

“Quite another Vein of Wickedness”
Making Sense of Highway Robbery in Defoe’s Colonel Jack
Jeanne Clegg
Sept. 30, 2016

Adolescents and Family Crises in Victorian vs Contemporary Prose Versions of Romeo and Juliet for a Female Audience
Laura Tosi
Sept. 30, 2016

Theatrical Life and Cultural Development in Liverpool Between 1740 and 1820
Cristina Consiglio
Sept. 30, 2016

An Orderly Beauty
The Translations of the Publishing House Laterza during the Fascist Regime
Elisa Fortunato
Sept. 30, 2016

“Let Me Have Claudio’s Head”
The Beheading of John the Baptist as a Remote Source in Measure for Measure
Giuseppe Leone
Sept. 30, 2016

Under Lowland Eyes: David Balfour in the Land of the Jacobites
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mapping of 18th-century Scotland in Kidnapped
Stella Moretti
Sept. 30, 2016

“The Essence of Individuality”
Hardy, the Regional Novel and the Romantic Legacy
Elena Rimondo
Sept. 30, 2016

Myths of Violence and Female Storytelling in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Kate Atkinson’s Human Croquet
Samanta Trivellini
Sept. 30, 2016

Romola: the Emerging Female Self in Renaissance Florence
Sandra Zodiaco
Sept. 30, 2016

Cognitive Aspect of Time in Ulitskaya’s Story Put’ osla in the Context of Postmodern Aesthetics
Shoghik Baghdasaryan
Sept. 30, 2016

Bioy Cesares: Neo-Fantastic and Deconstruction
Emanuele Leonardi
Sept. 30, 2016

Nature and Predestination in William Faulkner’s “Dry September”
Ginevra Paparoni
Sept. 30, 2016

A Feeling you Cannot Name
Clocks and Time in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree
Marco Petrelli
Sept. 30, 2016

Civilization and its Failures in the Unpublished and Lesser-known Twain
Nicholas Stangherlin
Sept. 30, 2016

Gymnastics of Affections and Fitness
Preliminary Remarks to a Bio-Poetic Lecture of Emilia Galotti
Maurizio Pirro
Sept. 30, 2016

An Atlas of Images of the Dark
Walter Benjamin vs Ernst Jünger
Gabriele Guerra
Sept. 30, 2016

A Liberating Vomit
Paths of the Disgust in the Novel Die Blechtrommel by Günter Grass (1959)
Massimo Bonifazio
Sept. 30, 2016

The Bard in the Sea
The Silent Voice of the Mediterranean in Die Einsamen by Paul Heyse
Anna Frassetto
Sept. 30, 2016

The Past Between Condemnation of Memory and Desire of Reconciliation
Ironic Paradoxes and Melancholy in Der Verlorene (Il fratello perduto, 1998) by Hans-Ulrich Treichel
Serena Grazzini
Sept. 30, 2016

DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_387
dc.title	“Let Me Have Claudio’s Head”. The Beheading of John the Baptist as a Remote Source in Measure for Measure
dc.contributor.author	Leone Giuseppe
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/2016/1/let-me-have-claudios-head/
dc.description.abstract	In an attempt to produce a reconstruction of the genealogy of the sources, this essay investigates the relationship between Measure for Measure and the Gospel of Matthew, examining in particular the possibility that the episode related to Claudio’s supposed beheading is somehow associated with the death of John the Baptist, as recorded in Matthew 14:1-12. In Shakespeare as well as in the Evangelist’s text, the request for the head is charged with a highly symbolic value: it is a visualization of the triumph, the gift that the instigator makes to his own superiority, a narcissistic gratification. It is an expression of personal affirmation; an acknowledgment of one’s own power and of the capacity to make it operative. Doing violence becomes an investigation of one’s own political force. It represents the violation of the corpse, the desecration of the relic. But it is also an appalling solution to put to rest any possible accusation related to immoral or illicit relationships condemned by the law. Moreover, it is a violent act, secretly perpetrated, with neither moral purposes nor royal warning.
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 50 \| September 2016
dc.issued	2016-09-30
dc.dateAccepted	2016-07-06
dc.dateSubmitted	2016-05-12
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2499-1562
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-50-16-15
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	John the Baptist
dc.subject	John the Baptist
dc.subject	Matthew’s Gospel
dc.subject	Matthew’s Gospel
dc.subject	Measure for Measure
dc.subject	Measure for Measure
dc.subject	Shakespeare
dc.subject	Shakespeare
	Download data