Mariana
Who is Mariana?
Mariana is introduced only in Act IV, though her history predates the play: once betrothed to Angelo, she was abandoned by him after her dowry was lost at sea along with her brother, a rejection the Duke describes with evident sympathy before bringing Isabella to meet her at her secluded moated grange. She lives in isolation, marked by grief the disguised Duke's visits seem calculated to ease.
Angelo's spurned former betrothed, whose substitution for Isabella in a secret nighttime assignation both entraps Angelo and restores her legal claim on him.
Appears In
Biography
Her role in the plot is to substitute for Isabella in the nighttime assignation Angelo believes he has arranged with Isabella herself - a scheme Mariana accepts readily, since a consummated contract of this kind carried real legal weight in the period's marriage law and offers her a path back to the man she still, apparently, wishes to marry. The substitution is completed without incident, leaving Mariana with a stronger legal claim on Angelo than she has ever had.
In the play's final scene, Mariana steps forward publicly to defend Angelo even as she accuses him, asking the Duke's mercy for the man who wronged her and insisting she wants no other husband, living or dead. Her plea, seconded by Isabella's own intercession, is instrumental in securing Angelo a marriage sentence rather than execution, closing her arc with the very outcome she set out to obtain.
Motivation
Mariana is motivated by a persistent, apparently undiminished love for Angelo despite his abandonment of her, which drives her willing participation in the bed-trick and her plea for his life once he is exposed.
Personality
Mariana's willingness to still want Angelo after his abandonment of her puzzles some of the other characters as much as it does modern readers, but the play presents her devotion as steady rather than naive - she uses the bed-trick deliberately to reclaim a legitimate marital claim, and her public plea for Angelo's life in Act V is calculated as much as it is emotional.