Before we go on to deal with these conflicting views of the ethical problem in Measure for Measure, let us take a parallel presentation in literature of the same problem, in which the implied judgment of the dramatist appears entirely different. Maeterlinck, in his Monna Vanna, shows us a beautiful and high-souled woman, the loving and faithful wife of the commandant of the city of Pisa. The city is beleaguered by foes, its power of defence is at an end, an assault is imminent, and the inhabitants will be exposed to all the havoc and outrage which attended warfare in the days when the conceptions so much prized by Mr. Lilly held undisputed sway. The captain of the besieging Florentine forces, a great soldier of fortune named Prinzivalle, had been an ancient playmate of Monna Vanna, and, unknown to her, had been her ardent lover. Being entreated for mercy, he sends an ultimatum. Let Monna Vanna spend a night in his tent, and he will provision the city and withdraw his army next day. Amid the indignation and distraction which the cruel dilemma causes in the household of the prince, Monna Vanna’s resolve shapes and hardens itself. She decides to sacrifice herself for the city. But Prinzivalle finds her a woman of marble. Her soul is so high-strung with heroic devotion that she regards her body as little as a cast-off rag—she is become as incapable of fear or shrinking as she is of base desire. His passion is chilled by the icy completeness of her self-surrender, while all that is noble in him responds to her nobility, and the city is saved without the terrible sacrifice which she was ready to perform.
Such is the tale of Monna Vanna, so far as it concerns our present discussion. In reading it, it is impossible not to feel that she was right, just as in reading Measure for Measure it is impossible not to feel that Isabella was right. What has a system of natural ethics, a system based on the conception of life and nature put forward in this book, to say upon the searching ethical question involved in these two great dramas? It is not an easy nor a pleasant question to subject to philosophic analysis, but it is a very important and critical one.
In the first place neither science nor sense will, I think, agree with Mr. Lilly’s estimate of “the surpassing excellence and sacrosanct character of virginal chastity.” Virginity, _in itself_ and apart from all qualifying circumstances, is the reverse of excellent and admirable. It means death, not life; it violates nature. What is really sound doctrine in this connexion is not the sanctity and excellence of virginity, but the deep degradation of making sexual relations a subject of barter. Wherever this prevails, whatever the church and the law may or may not have had to do with the transaction, the beauty and romance of life is blighted and destroyed. There is no conquest of culture which should be guarded more devotedly than the dignity and sweetness which are brought into the relations of man and woman by love, as the great poets have understood that word, love moving in its guarded circle of mutual trust and intimacy. A life is well lost in defence of this most sacred treasure of the spirit.