Measure For Measure: Critical Quotes Flashcards
1
Q
Lisa Hopkins - Marriage
A
- “Marriage provides comic closure, this is in fact rarely achieved”
- Marrige “ focuses primarily on the experience of the group”
- ” In the comic universe”, the “patriarchal order” is “reinforce” by marriage
2
Q
R.W. Maslen - Comedy
A
- Comedy “made tyrants uncomfortable and roused them to rage”
- “dealt with the dangerous present”
- “Comedy’s extraordinary flexibility” allowed it to “survive”
3
Q
Walter Kerr - Features of Comedy
A
- In Comedy the “very same man who us straining to divinise” is “bound in a nutshell”
- “a creature capable of transcending himself should be … incapable of controlling himself is hilarious”
- “Comedy will speak nothing but limitation”
4
Q
Stuart Hampton-Reeves: Political Climate
A
- ” The play is tightly bound up with the cultural politics of 1604”
- “The play was not written to simply flatter one man”
- It “balances” the “different audience positions without ever resolving them
- “Audiences were socially stratified”
- It was a “anxious” year due to the “new regime” in a country “still stalked by the spectre of religious radicalism”
5
Q
Philip Brockbank - Duke as Playwright
A
- “Duke’s lies are white lies”
- He uses “Romance tricks to recover order from human disarray”
- He employs “many well-meaning devices” to “save” others from the “consequences of crime, passion and folly”
- The Duke is a “trickster” but the “trick are played to a saving purpose”
6
Q
Katherine Maus - Sexual Behaviour
A
- The underlying assumption present is “that morality could and should be legislated”
- “what constitutes adequate severity is certainly at issue”
- Angelo’s “disastrous career” could be caused by his “strict sexual self-denial” which further leads him to “analyzes his own motives” which lead to an “increasing moral recklessness”
- “a powerful appreciation for virginity and belief in its semimagical powers persisted in Reformation England”
- St Augustine “persons who are forced to perform sexual acts are blameless”
