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Measure for Measure (Shakespeare Project Lecture) (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-15 20:54:25
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2026-06
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Content

'Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; to lie in cold obstruction and to rot; this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod...'

Our journey through the works of William Shakespeare continues, and we have now arrived in the Jacobean era with Measure for Measure.

We’re discussing problem plays, performing for King James, the age of plague, justice vs mercy, the Sermon on the Mount, hypocrisy, censorship, the Shakespearean difference, death, and so much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 from Elizabethan to Jacobean
  • 2:00 nihilistic despair in times of plague
  • 4:00 Shakespeare performs for King James
  • 6:00 catering to the new monarch’s taste
  • 9:00 Shakespeare’s social status soars
  • 11:00 the opening of Measure for Measure
  • 12:00 is lack of punishment permission?
  • 14:00 Duke Vincentio as playwright
  • 16:00 making a scarecrow of the law
  • 17:00 appreciating the bard’s vocabulary
  • 19:00 Claudio persecuted for lechery
  • 21:00 hypocrisy in the justice system
  • 22:00 puritan censorship of Shakespeare
  • 24:00 where does the title come from?
  • 25:00 ‘there is a plank in your own eye’
  • 27:00 battle of judgement vs mercy
  • 29:00 ‘condemn the fault and not the actor?’
  • 31:00 Shakespeare’s use of ‘tomorrow’
  • 33:00 showing pity when doing justice
  • 35:00 ‘were not you then as cruel…?’
  • 37:00 echoes of Hamlet’s existential dread
  • 38:00 life is a thing only fool’s value
  • 39:00 all we have is an after-dinner’s sleep
  • 40:00 is Barnadine the strongest character?
  • 41:00 appreciating my personal one-passage
  • 43:00 Harold Bloom on prisoner Barnadine
  • 45:00 ‘ay, but to die and go we know not where’
  • 47:00 Mariana & the trope of the bed-trick
  • 49:00 what sets Shakespeare’s works apart?
  • 51:00 how the bard reenergises his sources
  • 53:00 are Shakespeare’s comedies cruel?
  • 54:00 is Measure for Measure really a comedy?
  • 57:00 the ending of Measure for Measure
  • 59:00 Williams Shakespeare’s problem plays
  • 1:00:00 what do you make of this play?

Recommended Resources:

  • Arden Edition: The Arden edition of this play is, as usual, excellent. The critical introduction essay by Robert Watson is, in my opinion, one of the very best in the entire Arden series.
  • Poetry & Painting Appreciation: Alfred, Lord Tennyson was inspired by the character of Mariana and penned this poem, which offers a lyrical meditation upon melancholy, and loneliness. Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais was in turn inspired to create this painting of Mariana longing for her love. 
  • Scripture: The title of the play comes from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, which you can read here. Shakespeare's use of scripture was considered blasphemous and partly contributed to a piece of legislature that banned the use of religious phrases on the stage. 
  • Film Adaptation: There is a contemporary adaptation from 2019 set in Melbourne, Australia, which gives the story a very interesting gritty, realist spin. You can see the trailer of the film here. If you check it out, let us know if you think it works.
  • Audio Adaptation: I personally like to treat Measure for Measure as a closet drama and put the performance on in the theatre of my mind. But there is an excellent audio version that I recommend here, starring the Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.
  • Our Journey Thus Far: If you want to jump into any specific play, you can check out the works we've enjoyed thus far as part of our read-through here.

Questions for You:

1) Does this play feel like a comedy to you?

2) Who do you think is the strongest character?

3) What line, passage, or idea most resonated with you? And what is your personal grading for Measure for Measure?

Happy reading, Bardolators!

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Comments

Thomas Davidson

Another great lecture Ben! I just wanted to touch here on some thoughts about Isabella. For me, Isabella is the most intriguing character in the play. Isabella’s commitment to the values of purity and chastity have been deemed by various commentators as “excessive”. I do not know what yardstick can be used to meaningfully determine how overdone her commitments may be—or, more importantly, just who may legitimately do the measuring. As Shakespeare created her, Isabella has her beliefs, values, strict morality, and ideals. She sincerely strives to do what she believes is right and which is in accordance with a sanctioning religious authority. We may have no sympathy for her beliefs, and our values may suggest different courses of action for her or a different path to self-realization, but the choice is hers. Isabella harms or distresses no one apart from those who would insist that she remain sexually available. Yes, the firmness and rigidity of her convictions are expressed at times in ways we find chilling and disturbing, but at stake for her are the eternal consequences for her soul. No small matter, and she is very clear about that. And it is notable that Isabella is the only major character in the play that faces a rigorous test of her convictions and maintains them against horrific trial. Barnardine, I suppose, is just as consistent, but he lacks any coherent moral code, apart from his rather simple and nihilistic rejection of the forces that seek to destroy him. Isabella has also been regarded as having an unhealthy sexual repression—as evidenced by the extent of her disgust with unsanctioned sexual activity, for example, or her desire for the social structure of St. Clare that precludes unmonitored interactions with men. I have no difficulty disregarding the psychodynamic apparatus behind the concept of repression in this case, because I see no obvious textual basis for it. Frequently, such psychodynamic notions are grafted on to texts by modern sensibilities that are accustomed to employing them in analyses of literature written at a time when such notions were, at best, only nascent. I think Shakespeare’s text gives ample reason why Isabella might arrive at the conclusion that it is best for her withdraw from sexual relationships or the company of men. It is not simply because she has a disgust for sex per se or procreation as sanctioned by religious doctrine. Isabella willingly participates in the bed-trick for Mariana, for example, despite the deceit involved, because she believes it serves the greater good at restoring legal and religious sanction and redressing Angelo’s wrongs. (She may believe it, regardless of what I suspect is a much more complicated and problematic legal and theological matter) One reason for Isabella’s sexual reservation is simply the world of Vienna itself, as depicted by Shakespeare. This Vienna, as an artistic creation, is rife with sexual licentiousness, sexual exploitation, infidelity, the abandonment of women when men’s lusts are satisfied, bastardy, and multiple, various sins. We mainly only meet officials seeking to control sexual activity, the arrest and imprisonment for sexual activity out of wedlock, the officials who arrest and detain sexual miscreants, the bawds, pimps, and proprietresses of the “stews”. Of course, this is in part because the plot necessitates contact with such characters, but Shakespeare’s technique further emphasizes the over-sexualized world of Vienna. Shakespeare often enjoys sexual puns and double-entendres in his plays, but Measure for Measure seems to me to set a record for these. Even those characters of seeming upstanding morality (e.g., Escalus) use words with sexual connotations, even when the ostensible context has nothing or little to do with sex. The Arden editors, for example, cite page after page of them. In these ways Shakespeare limits our focus to a Vienna as a sexually problematic world in which we locate Isabella. Her rejection of sexual relations is at least understandable. Another reason for Isabella’s attitude is how men are depicted as responding to her. Although she is not flirtatious, nor a temptress, nor seductive in any self-directed way, men appear to respond to her with sexual attraction and lust. Angelo is the central case here, although there are allusions to other examples. Angelo makes it clear that Isabella did nothing directly to arouse his lust. Indeed, she appears to become an object of arousal for him precisely because of her evident purity and chastity. The text suggests that Angelo’s interest is sadistic: he wants to “despoil” her. Not without reason, Isabella has recognized that she is a target for men and is vulnerable to their power and she rejects them. I don’t see any of this as an indication of intrapsychic sexual repression. She has reasons for not wanting sexual contact with men and wants to abandon the world of male power over her. Her solution to withdraw from them is understandable in Shakespeare’s Vienna. Isabella reminded me of the interpolated story of Marcella the shepherdess in Don Quixote. Marcella rejected the prospect of marriage and withdrew her contact with all men. As a consequence, many men pursued her amorously, only to be rebuffed. One man died of unrequited love for her, and she was held responsible for his death and vilified for it. Marcella makes a remarkable appearance at the man’s funeral to state that it is not her fault that men love her, pursue her, and die because of her lack of love for them. It is the unreasonableness of men’s unwanted pursuit of her that is to blame and this is not her responsibility. After she makes her compelling case and again withdraws from the world of men, she is nevertheless immediately pursued by men who desire her. Finally, consider the Duke’s proposals to Isabella at the end of the play. The first proposal does appear to be at least an offer: “and for your lovely sake/Give me your hand and say you will be mine”, but even he then he defers the proposal to a “fitter time”. The second proposal hardly seems much like a proposal to me at all: he offers his thanks to all those who assisted him in his plot, turns to Isabel (as a culminating thank you?) and says “…Dear Isabel, I have a motion much imports your good,/Whereto if you’ll a willing ear incline,/What’s mine is yours and what is yours is mine./So bring us to our palace, where we’ll show/what’s yet behind that’s meet you all shall know.” Perhaps he intends a more formal proposal at the palace, but there’s no avowal of particular affection, a reminder of his rank and power, and a promise that he’ll tell more to all—at his discretion. Perhaps it is true that he is not much inclined to women as he earlier says. I zero in on “…if you’ll an ear incline”. Will she? Although Isabel appears grateful for the Duke’s intercession in saving Claudio and protecting her, is there any indication in the text of a loving affection in her exchanges with the Duke? Is there any real alleviation of the social concerns and personal vulnerability to the importunings of men that led her to desire withdrawal to the convent? Wouldn’t she be acceding to continue living in a world of male power over her? At the end, isn’t she where she was at the beginning of the play? Will she once more withdraw, as did Marcella the shepherdess? The play tells us one thing that is very clear about Isabella: she has the personal strength to resist even the strongest attack on her principles, and in the absence of anything that suggests these have changed, I imagine her being consistent and sticking to her principles and going to the convent. This would foul up Shakespeare’s neat couplings that ends the play, however much these appear to resolve little. Therefore, he only offers us silence.

Phil
>>130172214

Oh, Thomas, these reflections, comparisons, insights and questions you so articulately present are so illuminating! I love the Marcella the Shepherdess parallel! There is real depth in what you have to say across the board. Wow! I’m going to re-read your post a few more times and tuck it away for future enjoyment. Thank you!

David Prendergast

Terrific lecture, Ben, thank you. I liked the play very much. I like the ambiguity of some of the problem plays - they feel very modern or post-modern in that regard. I have to say, to a question you posed, that I do not find Claudio's musings on death to rise to the level of Hamlet's, not even close. I think Claudio pedestrian, Hamlet sublime. My favorite character in the play is Angelo. In a sense, he is the hero of the play for me. I watched the 2019 RSC production and enjoyed a fine performance in that role by Sandy Grierson. Angelo is of course a greatly flawed character, but very "real" in a way that the other characters did not match. As for the ending, I would like to think that Isabella's non-answer is a precursor to a refusal (she would not embarrass the Duke in public) -- and who would blame her, given her vocation and what she has just observed of the character and machinations of the men that she must deal with: Angelo, Claudio, and Duke Vincentio.

Phil

Favorite one liners: LUCIO. This may prove worse than hanging That we were all, as some would seem to be, Free from our faults, as faults from seeming free! What's yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even. No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? Come, cousin Angelo; In this I'll be impartial; be you judge Of your own cause.

Christopher Tiernan

Screenwriter Peter Straughan who brought Wolf Hall to the screen is creating “Folio.” It will recount how a collection of Shakespeare's works were assembled seven years after his death and preserved for future generations. Sign me up! If this link doesn’t get you there search for it on the Variety website. https://variety.com/2024/film/global/peter-straughan-shakespeare-folio-film-1235916887/?fbclid=IwAR1dn14QOScRs8K6aBwNEpafzRMKxsQjtqag5hKxyGYyFQbhAa9jkCU85xI

Arianna

Ben, will you be doing any more Reading Bible as Literature lectures? Perhaps we can have one about the Sermon on the Mount.

Mary-Ann Maronski

I’m rereading all of Shakespeare in no particular order and was wondering what play I would read next. After listening to this lecture I think I will go with Measure for Measure. I’ve been reading, listening to each play and watching a performance. I’m really enjoying it.

mariah schneider

I finally got to reading this one so I can be closer to on track for the next play. I enjoyed this play, I'll give it a B. It would be worth an A but I found the ending unsatisfactory.

Kelly R.

I really enjoyed reading over this thread just now since completing M4M and listening to a couple other linked lectures within it. I just began last month with Troilus and Cressida. I really enjoy Greek mythology so despite being a “problem play” I valued taking those stories for a bit of a diversion, a “what-if?” I gave it an A- based on earlier Shakespearean plays I’ve seen. I didn’t love the themes of M4M as much; I’m not “well versed” in the Bible. 🙃 I don’t find there to be many quotable lines beyond what’s been said already and not enough newly invented snappy insults either. I give it a B+ though, because as I’ve achieved the ripe old age of 44 this week I have been able to appreciate nuance tremendously more than my twenties and thirties. The world is so new still, that categories are invaluable for creating sense and ordering it in our minds. Once that’s sorted though, we can’t help but be most interested in the things that defy simple categorization. They turn out to be the most realistic or “true,” to our experiences which opens the way for some of the most interesting and important discussions. The multiple marriage closing of M4M is like a big wink to me. Theoretically marriage is what all humans strive for to achieve happiness. In reality we all know this can have the entire spectrum of effects on individual happiness. Perhaps Claudio and Juliet are happily married. Angelo and Mariana are married…satisfactorily but not ideally from both sides. Lucio and the prostitute are somewhere a little further along that spectrum towards “appropriate” or “comeuppance” to leave us thinking - good on ya! And the Duke and Isabella…could be a match in a spiritual but perhaps not ideally a physical sense - so I like that being left up to the audience to reason out for themselves. Therein lies a conundrum that is juicy for creating a tidy black and white ending if you’re young (like my teen needs!) or room to push back once you’re older and have seen a few things. 🤔 If plays and stories are easy to analyze we don’t find them so endlessly re-readable.

Ylva

After feeling slightly burned by the last problem plays, I went into Measure for Measure rather warily, unsure of what to expect. Not one act in, I was wrapped up in the words, in the dark topics, the social commentaries, and the power of the human interactions. In fact, one could say all the darkness I missed in many of the plays so far, I found sneaking in here. There was a prickling in the back of my neck during reading, suggesting the intrigue would catch me any minute now, so close did the play feel. And I love it. As to the question of whether I’m a fan of Shakespeare’s comedies, historical plays, tragedies, or problem plays, or generally lean towards his Elizabethan vs Jacobean phase: I’ve always seen myself as an advocate for tragedy. The catharsis is something I’d never want to miss, and I can’t help but think (with at least some mild self-mockery) of the Nabokov quote in Pnin that in stories, “Doom should not jam.” I also certainly don’t click with all of Shakespeare’s problem plays. And yet, I’ve always loved stories that put social moral questions and personal stories into focus and aren’t clear cut but complex—not giving me the feeling of being left hanging it it’s themes as Troilus and Cressida did but that aren’t easy to answer or pin down and come with very strong moments of crisis for as many characters as possible that they have to wrestle their way out of. So if I look at my current front runners in plays I’d say that speaking of myself as a Jacobean leaning Bardolator is premature at this stage (even though knowing Othello, Lear, and Macbeth and loving all three of them), and yet I like my dark themes, my tragic elements, but I need them to be not only tragic. So I draw a wobbly line right through the plays that have my a-ish eating (Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice, and this one) with having plays that still have my full love on the one side, and those I don’t click too well with so far on the other. The latter side holds a good deal of the comedies. No surprise for me there, really, though I’d still like to click with them better, and coming from the angle of appreciating irony helps. Snowbroth as a word makes me want to fangirl. The line got a highlighting circle from me, and it’s fascinating me how perfectly it fits the context of this play. At least, I don’t know if I’d apply its feeling to any of the other plays so far. More great words I found are salt imagination, concupiscible, arch-villain, circummured, and ungenjtured, amongst others. Furthermore, this play if any shows how astutely Shakespeare nails name-giving. Escalus made me perk up and smile at my Prometheus Bound copy lying a foot away from my reading seat. As to Isabella (who is the first of Shakespeare’s female characters after Juliet to really capture me for her cause). In the lecture video Joe shared, the professor highlights on Isabell’s being the Spanish version of Elizabeth with could hint at the former monarch and her not marrying. And what I personally find myself pausing over is that she’s exclusively referred to as Isabel throughout the entire play. Why is this so? Is this a restriction or as a symbol of the other not appreciating her unwavering moral more clearly? Then again, unwavering and inflexible in her beliefs she may be, but so are many other of the characters. One only need to look at Angelo. These two are truly like two sides of the same coin, aren’t they? Last but not least, the irony that the character who comes across as most contemptible and twisted in this play is called Angelo is delicious. Can’t not love Shakespeare for his humour. Pretty much fallen angel, eh? And yet I really liked his passages. He may be the villain of this play but he is complex. Rating: B+ “Oh, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it it tyrannous to use it like a giant.”