Measure for Measure

Question 1

Isabella

Answer 1

very virtuous & chaste. she starts off the play by wanting to become a nun. she has to decide whether or not to sleep with Lord Angelo in order to save her brother Claudio from execution.

Question 2

The Duke

Answer 2

dresses as a friar for most of the play in order to observe what’s happening in his absence. he’s virtuous, good, kind. he’s a lenient ruler, which is why he hires Angelo, so that the latter can be a tyrant in the Duke’s place.

Question 3

Claudio

Answer 3

sentenced to execution for impregnating his girlfriend Juliet before marriage.

Question 4

Lord Angelo

Answer 4

plays villain. he’s an extremely strict ruler, no mercy. however, he’s a huge hypocrite. he wishes to sleep with Isabella even tho he sentenced her brother to death for sleeping with an unwed woman.

Question 5

Act 2 Scene 4: Angelo and Isabella

Answer 5

Angelo proposes the idea that Isabella sleep with him in order to save her brother. This scene is a mirroring of Claudio and Juliet, but corrupt. While Claudio and Juliet’s relationship was consensual, Angelo and Isabella’s is not. Consent turns into coercion, sex turns into assault.

Question 6

Act 2 Scene 4, Angelo:

Answer 6

Admit no other way to save his life—
As I subscribe not that, nor any other.
But in the loss of question—that you, his sister,
Finding yourself desired of such a person,
Whose credit with the judge, or own great place,
Could fetch your brother from the manacles
Of the all-building law, and that there were
No earthly mean to save him, but that either
You must lay down the treasures of your body
To this supposed, or else let him suffer:
What would you do?

Angelo is proposing a hypothetical situation. To Isabella: Say that you were to sleep with someone connected to the judge, or the judge himself, and this would save your brother’s life. Would you?

Question 7

Isabella’s response to Angelo asking “what would you do?”.

Answer 7

As much for my poor brother as myself:
That is, were I under the terms of death,
Th’impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubies,
And strip myself to death, as to a bed
That longing have been sick for, ere I’d yield
My body up to shame.

She’d rather die than commit such an act.

Question 8

Act 3 Scene 1: The Duke (as a Friar) making a speech to Claudio about death after Claudio says “I’ve hope to live, and am prepared to die.”

Answer 8

Be absolute for death: either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter, Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep…
Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.