Critics

Question 1

Terence Eagleton

Answer 1

“Opposition between law and passion”

Question 2

Alex Aronson

Answer 2

“Both Angelo and Isabella hide their incomplete, crippled personalities behind a pose of chastity and self-control”

Question 3

Wilson Knight

Answer 3

“Isabella stands for sainted purity, Angelo for for Pharisaical righteousness, the Duke…enlightened ethic. Lucio represents indecent wit, Pompey and Mistress Overdone professional immorality.Barnadine is hard-headed, criminal insensitiveness”

“More humanity in the character if Mistress Overdone than in Isabella”

Question 4

Linda McFarlane

Answer 4

Points out Isabella’s no win situation and lack of choice: matrimony or chaste monasticism

Question 5

Barbara Everett

Answer 5

“The scenes between Angelo and Isabella, and then between Isabella and Claudio, lies the imbalance between mathematical truth and psychological truth…. extreme right does exceeding wrong”

“It’s chief discordance if broken music is that of inner against outer, mind against body”

Question 6

David L. Stevenson

Answer 6

Isabella is “the living antidote to all human charity”

Question 7

W.Empson

Answer 7

“The highflier you pitch the ethics of the Duke, the more surprising you must find his behaviour”