Measure for Measure

Question 1

Harold Bloom

Answer 1

‘Shakespeare does not bother to provide the Duke with any motivation’

Question 2

Richard Wilson

Answer 2

sees the Duke is a ‘Machiavellian power-monger who moves unseen and all-seeing among his people in order to better dominate them’

Question 3

Roger Allam

Answer 3

says the Duke ‘constantly uses other people as a means of self knowledge, through them he gains an understanding of himself’

Question 4

Cedric Watts

Answer 4

‘The Duke may be benevolent, but he often lacks considerable sensitivity’

Question 5

Marian Cox

Answer 5

‘Like Iago, the Duke is a playwright who devises and allocates roles; but unlike Iago, the Duke finds his human material intractable, and unwilling to follow the script’

Question 6

Kenneth Muir

Answer 6

The Duke appears to have a ‘supreme indifference to human feelings, like a scientist performing a controlled experiment on human nature’

Question 7

Wilson-knight

Answer 7

‘The Duke’s sense of human responsibility is delightful; he is like a kindly father, and all the rest are his children’

Question 8

Julliet Stevenson

Answer 8

‘The last act is a trial that exposes everyone but also gives them a chance to redeem themselves. The last character to be put on trial is the Duke’

Question 9

Cedric Watts (2)

Answer 9

‘The Duke’s proposal of marriage to Isabella suggests that Shakespeare intends us to relate the political to the familial, the harmonious state to the loving family’

Question 10

Roger Allam (2)

Answer 10

‘I felt as if I was subjecting Isabella, Angelo and Mariana to some sort of ideal by fire. The consequence as a whole had the ritual of purification’