Measure for Measure part b critics

Question 1

Hazlitt on the Duke

Answer 1

“more absorbed in his own plots and gravity than anxious for the welfare of the state”

Question 2

Ian Jack on the Duke

Answer 2

“messianic Duke” who returns and “save the state from chaos”

Question 3

WW Lawrence

Answer 3

“stage Duke, not a real person”

Lawrence further argued that “Dukes and friars… would help his narrative. He did not bother himself about the strict legality or rationality of their actions”

Question 4

Lever on the Duke

Answer 4

“Duke exemplifying what most of Shakespeare’s contemporaries would regard as the model ruler of a Christian polity”

Lucio acts as a foil to the Duke

Question 5

HR Coulsen on the Duke

Answer 5

“image mongering”

Question 6

Lynn 2017 on Isabella

Answer 6

“until meeting the Duke, Isabella has been a pillar of morality and clearly lives by strict code of ethics”

“it is at least plausible that Isabella could feel that she has no other options due to their inherent power imbalance”

Question 7

J Schulte 2003 on Isabella

Answer 7

“Isabella is a mere woman with no power of our own except her pristine reputation”
“Marcia Reifer and Barbara Baines assert that Isabella defends her virtue so vehemently because her ‘power, place, and value in society are so determined by her chastity that its forfeiture would constitute… a form of social and psychological suicide”
“Isabella is not perfect, she is no temptress. She can be unnecessarily harsh as seen in her confrontation Claudio and self-satisfied at times, but she is not to blame for angela’s downfall”
“Angelo makes it very clear that the reason he is attracted to Isabel is her level of purity, which sets her far above all other woman”
“Isabella is vilified as an evil seductress. Isabella’s chastity is often a central issue ,she is likely to fall into one of two categories: saint or whore”

Question 8

RW chambers ‘Isabella approved’

Answer 8

“nobility of Isabel”
“whatever we think of that instant decision, it is certainly not un-Christian”
“burden of her irrevocable decision”
“the honour of her family and her religion are more to her than mere life, her own or Claudio’s”

Question 9

Ernest Schanzer ‘Isabella Reproved’

Answer 9

‘Isabelle’s legalistic of divine justice, Shakespeare is, it would seem to me, strongly suggesting his own attitude towards her choice” which is the argument that Shakespeare doesn’t agree with Isabella’s choice
“splendid and terrible puritanism of Isabella” Schanzer sites Abercrombie of 1930
“for Isabel is no hypocrite, nor is there anything ugly about her puritanism. It is, as Abercrombie says, ‘splendid and terrible’”
“shown free from all inner conflict and doubt”

Question 10

Gregory Doran director of the Barbican Theatre production of measure for measure

Answer 10

“A play… whose story and themes feel even more urgent today”

Question 11

Barbara Everett on the subject of comedy

Answer 11

“how seriously we take it… depends on how we define seriousness in a work whose originality lies in confusing human notions of what is grave and what is funny”
“Shakespeare’s first true tragicomedy”
Planinc “measure for measure is a very odd play”
“the play meets the demands of two combined dramas… a perfectly symmetrical comic ending but dark matters are brought to light- things usually presented… in the tragedies”
“it begins as tragedy, but halfway through it becomes a comedy”

Question 12

Frye on comdedy genre

Answer 12

Frye “measure for measure is… about the relation of all things to the structure of comedy”

Question 13

Colleridge on MFM

Answer 13

“this play is one of Shakespeare’s most hateful works. The comic and tragic parts equally border on the hateful, the disgusting and the other horrible”

Question 14

York Notes on the Duke

Answer 14

the Duke “leaves office to gratify himself with self knowledge, some self discovery”
it is “a sort of cruelty” that the Duke is able to enjoy “superior knowledge about how events will turn out”

similar to Lever’s assertion that Lucio acts as a foil to the Duke, in act 5 “all of the characters are puppets, only Lucio offers a challenge to his tyranny”

Question 15

G. Wilson Knight ‘Measure for Measure and the gospels’

Answer 15

Knight sees MFM as an allegory for the bible
“The ethical standards of the gospels are rooted in the thought of measure for measure”
“the play tends towards allegory or symbolism”
“Christian ethic of the protagonist, the duke of Vienna”
“The Duke’s sense of human responsibility is delightful throughout: he is like a kindly father, and all the rest are his children”
“The Duke exercises the authority of a teacher throughout his disguise as a Frair”
“Isabella, like Angelo, has progressed far during the play’s action: from sanctity to humanity”
“he has seen an Angelo fall from grace at the first breath of power’s temptation, he has seen Isabella’s purity scarring, defacing her humanity. He has found more gentleness in ‘the steeled gaoler’ than in either of these. He has found more natural honesty and Pompey the bawd than Angelo the ascetic; more humanity in the charity of mistress overdone than in Isabella condemning her brother to death with venomed words in order to preserve her own chastity”

Question 16

‘Shakespeare’s patterns of self-knowledge’ ‘Measure for Measure- Looking into oneself’ Soellner

Answer 16

“A connection between self-knowledge and sexual knowledge”
“although Isabella was saved from having to submit herself sexually…she is a problematic heroin”
“Like Angela and because of him, she is subject to an intricate test of her character first by his loss for her and later by the problem of how his transgression should be judged”
“Shakespeare presented the major theme of measure for measure: the dilemma of man who judges and who is being judged”
“the major characters, like men in general, are sometimes in the stand of the accused and sometimes on the bench of the judge; they are most severely tested when they are in judgment of themselves”
“that man must judge and, most of all, must judge himself”
“It indicates that the law is apt to be administered poorly by those who have not looked into themselves and that there is at least hope of justice -and even more, of mercy- from the hands of those have looked into themselves and become more human”