YouSaid · the spoken record

Henry Oliver

lines on the record: 82
first: 2026-03-04
most recent: 2026-03-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Talking about death, but also being slightly surreal. We don't think of him as surreal, but some of those lines you've quoted, they're slightly absurd. It's a bit like in the merchant of Venice when Shylock famously says had that ring of Leo when I was a bachelor, I would not have traded it for a wilderness of monkeys, or in the taming of the shrew one of the maids is described as having gone down the garden to get some parsley as a maid and come back as a married woman, and she was getting the parsley to stuff a rabbit, and the whole image is just sort of slightly absurd of this woman getting married while she's stuffing a rabbit full of parsley. But Shakespeare somehow is very good at that kind of thing.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I doubt should have been able to quit it off top of my head. I love the bit when Isabella says to him, but man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, hardly knowing what he does, can do such things as make the angels weep, and periodically those lines become very relevant again.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in this play, I think everyone is strongly motivated by their own inner desires. I think of this almost as anti Gerardian. Isabella is not mimetic in any way. She has to be made to kneel at the end, and it's only because she is adhering to her own inner consistency that Angelo can talk her round into those difficult positions. The whole point of the substitutions is to show us you can't measure your brother against yourself. The substitutions have to be obviously fake to work.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's been stretched so far at this point. Measure for measure is not like midsummer night's dream. Midsummer night's dream is a perfectly Gerardian play, and he has a very, very clean analysis, and he points out that the lovers had switched their allegiances before the play begins, and we're told that in the text, right? And then in Troilus and Crusade, he has a very good reading of that, which is contemporaneous with this play. Crusade says, I won't sleep with you because at that point you'll lose all interest in me. And that's what happens. Troyus never wants to go to war until he slept with crusade, and then he gets up and says, right, better go and tell the boys about this. And it's only when he realizes that the Greeks are going to try and take crusade for their own that he becomes interested in her again. Perfectly Gerardian.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, isn't the whole point of the substitution that they're not doubles? No one actually is substituted properly. There is no...”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a totally normal thing in English literature to point up the abuses and the corruption of Catholic institutions. And as Isabella going to the nunnery, right? So I don't buy the Catholic thing at all. The whole effort to tell us that Shakespeare was Catholic, I don't buy, partly because I just don't think you're ever going to get the necessary evidence.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is not a basis for saying all Shakespeare's a secret Catholic and this play is really trying to be popish or whatever. I mean, to me that's a bit like, you know, using numerical analysis in the Bible to start saying we know when the day of judgment's coming. I mean, it just doesn't hold water.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we have the evidence for it. I think it's not good enough to go around talking about friars and pre-Reformation this and setting it in particular country or whatever. Obviously Shakespeare is always writing about the Reformation and he's always writing about the tension between pre and post-Reformation culture, not the least in terms of that there's now an official policy, but everyone remembers what it was like and they sort of miss ordinary life in pre-Reformation times and their mothers did things differently and there's a cultural problem there. He's always writing about that. Hamlet's about that, right?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what I mean, like going into a corrupt nunnery, submitting to Angelo, possibly dying or marrying the Duke. Shakespeare's saying this is the best we can hope for her. That may be not what we want and we may sort of rail against it, but that's not a bad ending. It looks like an unhappy ending, but it's not a bad ending.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there is. I think that he and Isabelle are clearly mirrors of each other. He's justice and she's mercy, he's temperance and she's passion. They both, it turns out, are happy to be deceitful in the cause of justice. They hate lying and they hate wrongdoing, but they're happy to do it in a good cause, so they share a kind of pragmatism. And they get married because in a funny way they're the least sexualized characters. I think it's all done to make them a pair. And in a funny way, like not a badly matched pair. If you had to force Isabella to marry someone in this play,”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're making The personal ideas about is this reference to James's secret homosexuality or whatever, that's too speculative for me.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly James's ideas of justice and government are not unfamiliar to this play, and I would not be surprised if this play was, at least in a sort of the way you watch it and interpret it in quick succession was somewhat flattering to James, yes. These other things, I think there's often a lot of attempt to say, you know, to link Shakespeare's work to current events of his day. And it's always a bit, well, it's sort of this, and it's sort of similar. And, you know, it can't be sustained, can it? Shakespeare's cleverer than that.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think Shakespeare is taking up a theme that is current at court and which we know James is interested in, how to deal with religious tension, how to deal with sexual behavior south of the river. And I think he's basically saying, you know, at the end of the day, the king's going to come in and impose the law, and that's just how it should be. That's a plausible reading which the king could take away from it during a performance, right?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We know it was performed for him at court. We know it wasn't otherwise hugely popular because there was no quarto, so it was perhaps written with him in mind more than in other ways. The idea of measuring yourself that I mentioned earlier, that's quite a common idea in Shakespeare's England. There's a morality play, for example, where Mercy says measure yourself ever beware of excess. And obviously the Puritans love to measure themselves. But self-judgment can't be the basis of public policy and that we have this king now who's very interested in these ideas of justice and law. And there was a sermon delivered when James became king, and there's a section in the sermon about the duties of a prince who represents God, and one of them is the execution of just judgment by which all must be measured.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She and the Duke arranged that she would do that in order to then substitute Mariana. For your reading to work, these lines would have to mean everyone thinks it was Mariana, including you who's going to use that as leverage to get Angelo married, but we both secretly know and won't tell anyone else that it wasn't married. I mean, that can't work, can it?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Supposed to wonder, but Shakespeare is giving her the opportunity to rephrase it all. I mean, I don't think Shakespeare at this point is using prayed and kneeled to mean anything other than what is literally being said. I think she is an image of virtue. This is what the Duke said. If you can't take your virtue forth like a light, there's no point having it. That's what she's done, the whole play. The vile conclusion I now begin with grief and shame to utter. He would not, but by gift of my chaste body, to his concupiscable intemperate lust release my brother, and after much debate my sisterly remorse confutes mine honour and I did yield to him. That is a reference to the argument that they were having when he backed her into a corner and she had to admit that there was an inconsistency in her position. I think that's Act two scene two, and she had to yield the premise of his argument. I don't think there's any sense in which Shakespeare has done anything other than lead us to believe that.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What she's doing there is re speaking Claudio's lines from the earlier in the play when he says she has a prone and speechless dialect in her youth that is the, you know, this was what will tempt Angelo and there's a huge amount of confusion about what that means. Sure. Does it mean that she will speak in a way that will be persuasive, or does it mean that without her knowing, without her having any awareness of it, her presence will sort of inflame Angelo into taking her side? And this, I think, I don't know, I think you'd be interested in this as an economist, Tyler. This goes back to all the coinage imagery. Is it the metal or is it the face stamped on the metal that gives it the value?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's even what William James actually says pragmatism is, right? So there's this constant thing of I'm trying to tell you he's wicked and you won't hear me. So part of the context for these lines is that she has to say it in a way the Duke will accept. And then he says, okay, give me the matter. In brief, to set the needless process by how I persuaded, how I prayed and kneeled, how he refelled me and how I replied.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let's go through it. Let's go through it because I think sometimes with Shakespeare, you have to take it line by line. I agree. She says, I went to this pernicious Catif deputy, and the Duke takes issue with her phrasing and she says, well, the phrasing is everything, isn't it? The phrasing is what we're talking about. And to me, this is the first sign of Shakespeare's pragmatism. People keep unstitching each other's words in this play.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With this point, absolutely not. My reading of Act 1 scene 4 when she goes into the nunnery, when she says, and have you nuns no further privileges than Dunn says, are not these large enough? She says, yes, truly, I speak not as desiring more, but rather wishing a more strict restraint. I think she's saying, well, are you really strict enough to be nuns? This nunnery doesn't seem very nunish, right? And Lucio then says hail virgin if you be, which is him saying I'll believe there's a virgin in this nunnery when I see it kind of thing. And I think the criticism is not at her, but at the institution. And this is consistent with the rest of the play. The individual always stands out against the institution, against the abstract argument, against some high ideal of justice that can't be implemented. And I see Isabella much more as trapped in a kind of Kafkaesque reality, why she in fact is good, and everyone else is the problem.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not obvious that that will work out well. Doesn't Lucio even say, oh, I'll be living in the best house on the main street for a penny because the market will collapse. And there's a lot of other coinage imagery. The relationship between the idea of stamping a coin as a metaphor for procreation and the importance of demographics to sustaining the economy is, I think, quite well established. So I read it more in the sense of Isabella feels like she's being forced into the sex market, whether through marriage, whether through blackmail, whatever, because of this kind of, the state must have people. The state must have a population to exist, going to the nunnery is her way of maintaining her principles and avoiding that. And at the end, the Duke says, well, sorry, but if we're shutting down the brothels and being good, you are going to have to get married and have babies because we don't have another way out of the fertility crisis.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I read Isabella more sympathetically than those critics. And there are a lot of other critics as well who take Helena in Allswell that ends well in a similarly. They're sort of appalled at the idea that this woman would force a man into marriage, and so they just can't come to terms with her, right? And equally, a lot of people, I think, are appalled with Isabella going into the convent. I don't read it along with this incest argument. I know what you mean. For me, it's more of a fertility crisis play. There is a genuine question, I think Lucio voices it most loudly, but there's a genuine question among them all that if we shut down the brothels, what will happen to the birth rate?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that play, Bertram is much more obviously deserving of what he gets at the end. It's an interesting, it's a sort of twin, it's written about the same time as measure for measure. As you say, the plots are very similar. But in that play, although the marriage is imposed upon Bertram and he doesn't want it, he then behaves so badly that even those critics like Samuel Johnson who just find the play, you know, sort of too much and they don't like it, they say, I just never reconcile myself to Bertram. He's so bad. And there's a sense in which there is actually a bit more justice at the end of that play, and maybe they could become happy. I don't think Shakespeare leaves us with that at the end of measure for measure.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not for me really an open debate when Isabella kneels down and pleads at the end. She's just been broken. And Shakespeare's saying there is no other way to make that work unless people die”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is why I think it's a work of pragmatism because Shakespeare's saying, look, either we sort of force everyone to get married, or they all end up worse off. You know, in this scenario, no one is dead. It wouldn't just be if Isabella had had to submit to Angelo she would probably have killed herself, but several other people would have died as well, right? The alternative ending here is not more happy marriages, but the play is actually a tragedy. So I do agree with what you're saying, but I think Shakespeare is ideologically pragmatic in a way. And he's saying this is just the only way things can work. You can contrast it with the end of Taming of the Shrew, where it's argued like when she submits, is that a happy thing? Because she's found the only other person in the world who's actually like her. And so she's happy to enter into a sort of mutuality with them. Or has she just been broken by the patriarchy and she will, in fact, suffer in this marriage? It's an open debate in that place.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's sceptical about the ability of a secular authority to actually impose these rules in a world where men have many masters of vice, right? And we must remember that on the south bank of the river where the playhouse was, the main institutions were pubs, brothels, and bishops' residences. And I think that's reflected in the inability of the law to work in this play. Shakespeare says, well, we're all living in a London where these laws cannot be implemented at all. We all know it's wrong. And he's trying to bring that to the fore.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way I read it is Porsche has been a great hypocrite in the Merchant of Venice. She tells Shylock to show mercy, and then she breaks him because he's a Jew. In this play, Angelo's the great hypocrite, but in fact they all have problems being consistent with their principles. Merchant is saying the Christian state can't really be consistent with its own ideas. Measure for measure is saying no individual can be consistent with their own ideas. And Isabella makes a point of that again and again. We cannot weigh our brother with ourself. And the whole, I think, point of the play is to say, you must weigh yourself in the balance. And that's a very difficult thing to do, and it's not going to work very well, and there'll be some arbitrary law imposed on you at the end. But spouting off these abstract principles, where does that get you? You're going to be a hypocrite. You're going to have these inconsistencies. We're just going to have to make it work. So I see it as a sort of great work of pragmatism in that sense.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, there's a wonderful bid at the end of the Merchant of Venice when Porsche and Narissa come back to Belmont, and Porsche has those famous lines, that light we see is burning in my hall, how far that little candle throws his beams, so shines a good deed in a naughty world. Measure for measure is the naughty world, and Narissa says to Porsche, when the moonshone we did not see the candle, and she replies So doth the greater glory dim the less a substitute shines brightly as a king, unto the king be by, and then his state empties itself, as doth an inland brook into the mane of waters. Well, that basically is the plot, isn't it? Angelo shines like a king, until the real Duke comes back and then his authority is immediately drained away. We see him for what he really is, and those lines are echoed at the beginning when the Duke says that our virtues go forwards from a slight lights, and if they didn't, there would be no point in having them. And so”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think basically it picks up where the merchant of Venice leaves off. It takes the problem of mercy. Do you remember Porsche says the quality of mercy is not strange. It droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven. And in this play, the quality of mercy is very strained and it does not drop like the gentle rain it is a contrivance of human government. And the question is, can we actually have mercy?”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That the scenes between Isabella and Angelo are so enthralling and so passionate and, I mean, really some of Shakespeare's best work. And I had ossified into sort of remembering it as a play of ideas, but actually it's really, really an exciting play, particularly between those two.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not the sort of ending that you would typically want in a comedy or these days in a rom-com or a sitcom or something where the people who want to get married get married and there are bells and nice dresses. It's more like you're all going to get married and I'm telling you what to do and there's a lot of commentary saying well do any of these people actually want to be married. So it's not happy.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it's very difficult to enjoy on the stage. The ending is unsatisfactory from an entertainment point of view. It's often not so easy to follow the arguments if they're delivered in the rapid clip that Shakespearean acting would rely on. And I think, you know, a lot of people want a happier story than this. Shakespeare was experimenting with a comedy that had an unhappy ending. You probably can't think of many other comedies like that, and there's a reason.”
2026-03-04 · Conversations with Tyler · Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source