Measure for Measure A Question

Question 1

Angelo’s Depravity - 9 quotes

Answer 1

‘Seeming, seeming!’
‘What man thou art/Who will believe thee, Isabel?’
‘angel on the outward side’
“Accountant to the law upon the pain.”
“Let’s write ‘Good Angel’ on the devil’s horn”
‘By putting on the destined livery’
‘My false o’erweighs your true.’
‘tis surely for a name.’
‘Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall’

Question 2

Duke’s Manipulation + Power - 6 quotes

Answer 2

‘I will, as ‘twere a brother of your order,/ Visit both prince and people’
‘Mortality and Mercy in Vienna/Live in thy tongue and heart’
‘a man of stricture and firm abstinence’
‘Let there be more tests to be made of my metal’
“He who the sword of heaven will bear/Should be as holy as severe,”
“O, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant.”

Question 3

Marianna - 4 quotes

Answer 3

‘Left her in her tears, and dried not one of them with his comfort,’
‘pretending in her discoveries of dishonor’
‘Let him live’
‘moated grange’

Question 4

Lucio - 6 quotes

Answer 4

“Hail, virgin, if you be - as those cheek-roses proclaim you are no less.”
“A man whose blood is very snow broth.”
“Which have for long run by the hideous law as mice by lions.”
“If the old fantastical Duke of dark corners had been at home, he had lived.”
“Honest in nothing but in his clothes and one that hath spoke most villainous speeches of the Duke.”
“Marrying a punk, my lord, is pressing to death, whipping, and hanging.

Question 5

Technical Components

Answer 5

RSC production
Stage directions
Madonna-Whore dichotomy
Prose or verse
Shared lines
Monologue, soliloquy
Fricatives plosives sibilance
Staging
Disguises
Imperatives
Rhyming couplet
Invocation of religion - Puritan doctrine

Question 6

Examples of staging

Answer 6

Public and Private spaces

RSC use of disguises and costumes, lighting and spacing
- Wearing the Duke’s robes and medallion
- Cilice around Angelo’s leg

Isabella and Marianna kneeling

Use of the bed-trick

Question 7

Playwriting techniques

Answer 7

The mix of comedy and dark themes (sexual coercion, justice, hypocrisy) classifies it as a “problem play.” + Morally ambiguous characters

Language
- Angelo uses rigid, legalistic language; Isabella speaks in moral absolutes; Lucio uses comic prose and bawdy jokes—Shakespeare uses verse vs. prose to reflect character and class.
- Isabella’s lines are full of rhetorical devices—anaphora, alliteration, and appeals to justice and virtue, revealing her inner strength.

Justice vs. mercy, power vs. corruption, chastity vs. desire—these are argued rather than shown.

Dramatic Irony
- audiences know about the subplots behind the characters and stuff

Bed-Trick
- modern reinterpretation of consent?