Measure for Measure (Oxford School Shakespeare Series)

Rating:
Summary: A masterwork full of ideas and indelible characters
Review: While not one of Shakespeare's transcendent achievements, "Measure for Measure" is very much a masterwork. While easy to read and to follow, it actually has a vast number of moral complexities that challenge us to think about our own humanity, our sense of justice and charity, and the ways in which even the best among us are so easily compromised.

The title, of course, comes from the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 7:2 says: For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. While the surface reading of this verse seems to be talking about judging righteousness or evil (and it is that), it goes much deeper. It is also choosing one thing over another and the necessity of harvesting what those choices unavoidably bring.

This play is inhabited by many strange characters that exhibit all sorts of self-contained contradictions. The Duke of a very decadent Vienna who decrees that extra-marital relations will be punished by death, who is uncomfortable with public adulation, who spends most of the play disguised as a Friar. He is not called the Duke of Dark Corners for nothing. Poor Claudio is arrested and sentenced to die because is beloved Juliet is about to give birth to their child. This while the bawd Pompey is arrested and let off without even being whipped. Angelo, who is certainly no angel, is put in temporary power by the Duke during his time away from court. It is Angelo who has Claudio arrested and sentenced.

Isabelle, Claudio's sister, is about to take her vows as a nun, but comes to plead for her brother. Angelo says he will spare Claudio if she will let Angelo take her chastity. She refuses, but consents to the Friar's plan to ensnare Angelo. This is says nothing about Lucio and his being on all sides of every situation in the play.

While I admire all the Arden editions, this play has a particularly fine opening essay especially when it comes to the character and qualities discussed in the play. The editor provides us insight to how our modern sensibilities will mislead us and keep us from seeing the Elizabethan issues being worked out during the play.

The Appendices offer multiple versions of the source material for this play. Some of which it is suspected that Shakespeare used or was used by those who created the materials that Shakespeare used. It is a fascinating subject, especially when one notes the differences between the sources and the shape Shakespeare finally gave the plot. It is indeed a very different play.

I think the editor, J.W. Lever, makes a great point that this should be considered a drama of ideas rather than being included in that cloudy category of "Problem Plays" that so many scholars use as a catch all for those plays that aren't completely comedies and are certainly not tragedies like Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, or Lear.

Strongly Recommended